


Intervention

by Elizabeth Culmer (edenfalling)



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alien/Human Relationships, Dubious Science, Ethical Dilemmas, F/F, Gen, Medical, Medical Jargon, Original Character(s), Space Battles, Space Pirates, WIP Bing Bang 2017
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-14
Updated: 2017-08-14
Packaged: 2018-12-15 04:12:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11798127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenfalling/pseuds/Elizabeth%20Culmer
Summary: Jayavanti Chatterjee wanted to see the stars, but in her own way; working as a nurse on a Red Cross and Red Crescent patrol and intervention ship seemed like a good option. Now, as her crew work to investigate and treat a mysterious plague on a small and deliberately isolationist human colony, and hints of a great danger lurk in the background, she's beginning to rethink her choices. (A Star Trek: AOS fic centered entirely on original characters with a brief cameo from theEnterprisenear the end.)





	Intervention

**Author's Note:**

> Written approximately eight years late for [valles_uf](http://valles_uf.livejournal.com), in response to the prompt: _I didn't see the latest Trek film (didn't have the scratch for a ticket), but I have this scenario in my head - probably due to Babylon 5 infection - one small ship, a pirate squadron, and Enterprise still an hour out. Buying time for the colony behind them, not themselves._
> 
> Thanks to Madame Hardy and Syrena_of_the_Lake for beta-reading! And a thousand thanks to the amazing [Loracine](http://loracine.livejournal.com) for the wonderful art! (Please go check out the [art masterpost](http://loracine.livejournal.com/34356.html) to see all three together and give feedback!)

\---------------------------------------------  
**Intervention**  
\---------------  
**Being a report of the involvement of the Interstellar Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies colony patrol and first response ship _Amber Lotus_ (IRCC-2768) in the Simplicity plague and subsequent events**  
\---------------------------------------------

**Eight Days Before:**

Jayavanti Chatterjee frowned at the com station and replayed the static-laced transmission a fourth time. Granted, a lot of border colonies had jerry-rigged technology at the best of times, but if she had the transcription right, even the phrasing of this distress call was nonstandard. Not to mention the lack of little things like programmable coordinates. But maybe she was just missing details in the fuzz.

"Hegev? Come listen to this, will you? I want a second set of ears for confirmation."

No reply. Jayavanti raised her voice. "Hegev?"

"Check the clock, princess. She's not on shift for another hour." Zhi-ren propped his elbows on the back of Jayavanti's chair and peered over her shoulder. "What's on the board?"

His breath raised the short hairs on the nape of her neck. Jayavanti twitched at his intrusion into her space and spun the chair on its base, twisting away from his hands. "SOS, I think. A colony world on the Orion Congeries border, human-only population, settled in" -- she did some quick subtraction -- "2173. They report an unidentified plague with symptoms including fever, violent delirium, and coughing fits that end with the victims drowning in their own blood. Progression averages five days from symptom onset to death. And I don't think they have any real doctors or hospitals, for whatever reason."

Zhi-ren whistled. "Ugly. I hate the ones where they're trying to beat us up while we treat them; I always feel like shit no matter how we respond. Plus blood barf, always a favorite. But that's what we're out here for. Lay in the course."

"That's the thing," Jayavanti said. "I can't make out any coordinates in the transmission and I don't recognize the colony name. Judging by the transmission vector they're in our region, but they're not on the patrol route, which makes no sense if they're so unprepared for a crisis." She tapped the headset against the console's edge. "Have you ever heard of a planet called Simplicity?"

Zhi-ren shook his head, long black hair whipping around his face. "No. I bet Inez has, though."

Jayavanti pulled off the headset and frowned at him. "Yeah, of course she has. She knows every backwater planet in the Federation and probably half the unaffiliated worlds as well. She's the captain; it's her job. I just don't want to wake her before her sleep shift ends."

"But you'll wake Hegev?" Zhi-ren waggled his eyebrows. "Tea parties and sweet insults not enough anymore? Are you moving on to _real_ intimacy? "

"Seriously, would you lay off about me and Hegev already? Privacy is still a thing that exists."

Zhi-ren held up his hands, open palms displayed, and rolled his eyes. "I don't know why you bother on a ship this small, but okay, noted. Your personal life remains wrapped in an impenetrable aura of mystery. Now hand me the headset, princess. My ears aren't as good as Hegev's, but I can probably persuade the computer to filter out a bit more of the random noise and if that doesn't help, I'll run a cross reference search in the navigation database. It does have common names as well as system designations."

Jayavanti slapped her forehead with her free hand.

Zhi-ren's lips twitched up in smile that almost managed to balance sympathy with amusement. "Hey, we were all new at this once. You'll learn. Meanwhile, go find Kath and Nico and tell them we'll have a nice little xenobio puzzle in a couple days."

"We'll have a lot of _patients_ , you jerk," muttered Jayavanti, but she stood and handed over the headset without further comment. Water was wet, space was black, Lu Zhi-ren was a jackass; that was just the way things were, and she had learned to cope. The rush of traveling between the stars and doing medical work that made a difference to people in need was worth the occasional aggravation her crewmates could provide.

As Zhi-ren pulled his hair into a low ponytail and settled the headset over his ears, Jayavanti collected her mug of tea and waved her hand at the door's activation sensor. The main deck corridor was empty and none of the labs had occupied lights by their doors, so she headed aft toward the crew quarters. With good luck, this plague would be something familiar and easily treated, they could drop off supplies, and they'd be back to their regular patrol schedule with only a week or so lost. With bad luck, though, they'd have to call in Starfleet Medical or haul other Red Cross ships away from Vik or the recent Klingon incursion sites. And the galaxy seemed to be low on luck these days.

Maybe she'd burn incense to Lakshmi tonight, on the off chance that the goddess was feeling kind (and was paying attention, this far from Earth, to a prayer from someone who only philosophically worshipped her as an aspect of Shakti). Or no, not Lakshmi. Kali would be better -- what better miracle than for the great mother to turn death against itself? Besides, Jayavanti already had a print of Daksinakali fastened to her cabin wall, a legacy from her angry teenage years that had become one of her chief signs of continuity through college, nursing school, and the six month training course she'd needed to qualify for extended shipboard duty. Offering to that felt more meaningful than offering to a digital image of Lakshmi on her console.

Jayavanti leaned into the common room as the door slid open. Nico was nursing his morning coffee as he read something on his padd -- probably yet another biochemistry journal. Kath and Jahiem were off in the other corner, playing a fast-paced card game that involved a lot of slapping at the table between them, pulling stacks of cards back and forth at unnerving speed. Jayavanti stuck her fingers into her mouth and whistled. "Hey! Everyone, we have an emergency aid request. Come listen to the transmission and tell me what to prep."

\---------------

**Seven Days Before:**

"So, plague."

Katherine Rush hummed in noncommittal agreement and continued scrolling through the med lab's central database, her free hand flicking back and forth over the thread-wrapped tip of a single narrow braid.

Jayavanti rocked back on her feet, shifting her weight from toes to heels, and tried again. "Have you dealt with any complete unknowns before? Or have they all been mutations of known pathogens?"

"In a minute," said Kath, still not listening.

Before Jayavanti could try a third time, Jahiem caught her eye with an exaggerated wink. He set a tray of empty blood test phials on the table where he'd been assembling sample kits, tiptoed across the floor, and clapped his hands over Kath's eyes. "Katherine, light of my life, star of my sky, angel of my heart," he whispered loudly into her ear, "Jayavanti is asking for your help. Take a minute and be a responsible superior officer."

Kath sighed and raised her hands to rest on Jahiem's arms, wrapping her fingers partway around his wrists. "Sugar, I love you, but is this really the time for games?"

"Yes," said Jahiem, and slid his hands from her face to her shoulders. Kath turned in his embrace and Jahiem swooped down for a kiss. After a moment, Kath sank her fingers into the exuberant poof of his hair and tugged him closer.

Jayavanti glanced away, shuffling her feet in embarrassment. It was good to see married people still in love, but in her opinion, Kath and Jahiem were way too public about touching. Also, this was not getting her any answers.

"Now that I have your attention, sweetheart," Jahiem said eventually, "go talk to Jayavanti. I can run a search on potentially related diseases and parasites just as well as you can." He nudged his wife away from the database console and began typing.

Kath sighed again and beckoned Jayavanti over to the chemical replicator, nestled safe in the wall behind its ventilation hood. "You wanted to talk. So talk."

Jayavanti hesitated a second, shifting awkwardly on her toes. She was fairly sure Kath didn't mean to be intimidating -- she'd sent Jayavanti a bunch of useful advice before the start of their patrol, and went out of her way to include Jayavanti in lab work as more than just a spare set of hands -- but being the target of her concentration always made Jayavanti feel like she was a specimen slide under a microscope, about to be tossed into the trash.

Still. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. "Have you dealt with plagues before? I mean, you must have -- you and Jahiem have been with the Red Cross for fifteen years, right? -- but have they been twists on old bugs or something completely new and alien? How do you cope if there isn't a treatment?" She shuffled her feet again.

Kath leaned against the ventilation hood, folded her arms, and frowned. Jayavanti's shoulders twitched involuntarily, trying to hunch over and make herself small, even though she had a good four inches and twenty pounds on Kath.

"You cope by working," Kath said. "If you're feeling religious, you might try praying. If you're not, you remember that we're very small compared to the cosmos and random chance is a fucking bitch. People are always going to die; that's the price of life. It's our job to put off the payment as long as possible." She shrugged, microscope gaze blurring out of focus as she stared into her own past. "I've seen a lot of influenza variants, a couple TB mutations, one extremely vicious strain of Andorian kiir-senthis, about a dozen variants of Tellarite nerve-fire and spider-mold, one _nasty_ fever the Vulcans never did give us a name for, some other species-specific pathogens, and a few things no one had ever run across anywhere before. None of them were pretty. All of them killed."

"But you figured out treatments, right?"

"Eventually," Kath said. "You can beat any disease if you throw enough time and money at the problem. But for one of the new bugs -- did you ever study New Geneva hacking cough, the one that basically disintegrates your lungs? Goes after a good half of Federation member races, not just humans?"

Jayavanti nodded.

"My first off-planet job was the initial response team for that one. And I researched every damn treatment avenue I could, but the best we managed was quarantine, palliative care, and transplants -- keep replacing old tissue with new, surgery after surgery, until it felt like we were stitching spare parts into people instead of stitching people back together. The Frankenstein corps, we called ourselves. Starfleet Medical kept the name when they took over." Kath shook her head. "Dr. Tshabalala's team finally found a vaccine last year, but even twenty years on we still can't _cure_ the sucker. Not every battle is winnable. But you have to keep fighting."

"Oh," said Jayavanti.

Kath frowned again. "Fuck all, I depressed you. Jahiem! Sugar, I broke Jayavanti. Come fix her."

Jahiem looked up from the database console, peered thoughtfully at Jayavanti, and said, "Go find Hegev, have a cup of hot chocolate or that awful, over-steeped tea you like, and argue about something trivial -- a video game, your favorite flowers, that kind of thing. We'll get to Simplicity when we get there and we'll deal with what we find. Until then, there's no point stressing yourself over the inevitable."

"You heard him. Go on, shoo," said Kath when Jayavanti hesitated. She laid her hands on Jayavanti's shoulders and steered her out of the lab. "But listen, Jayavanti, if you're still worried? You'll do fine. I've watched you on our last few stops. You're good with patients -- Jahiem says you're a great nurse -- and you're a promising lab tech as well. Whatever happens, you'll be useful, which is the best way to cope. Trust me on that. Now go find your girl and do something selfish while we still have the time."

\---------------

**Six Days Before:**

The crew slowly gathered on the bridge as Jayavanti steered the _Amber Lotus_ toward the edge of the equatorial asteroid ring Simplicity had instead of a moon. This was easy piloting, nothing like emergency drills or some of the maneuvers she'd pulled in holo games, so she let half her attention wander to the planet growing on the main viewscreen. From space, Simplicity looked far bluer than Earth -- shallow oceans covered a good 85 percent of its surface area, broken by scattered archipelagos and two smallish continents, one equatorial and one in the southern hemisphere's temperate zone. White clouds drifted gracefully over sea and land alike, and the ice chunks in the ring blazed brilliantly with reflected sunlight.

"Geostationary orbit in one minute," Jayavanti announced. "I'm parking us above the east coast of the southern continent, since that seems to be the only settled landmass. Nobody touch the autopilot unless there's an emergency. I don't need to lose sleep fixing your mistakes for the third planet in a row."

"A man has one near-miss with a shuttlecraft and an emergency clinic and y'all never let me live it down," Jaheim said, shaking his head with mock sorrow.

"Hey, I don't tell you how to doctor. You don't tell me how to pilot," Jayavanti said with equally mock seriousness. "Anyway, if I'm reading the scanners right it's mostly villages down there, nothing more than five, six hundred people in each cluster. There's a lot of static, though. Hegev? Can you fix that?"

At the engineering station, Hegev nich Tal frowned at her computer panels, wrinkles deepening around her snout. "I don't know. It's not an equipment problem, probably something native to the planet or the ring. I'll see if I can adjust the com to filter the worst out before Elakwa makes the call."

"Perhaps you should make the call, in case the signal needs tuning in mid-transmission," Elakwa Baerdi suggested as Hegev switched seats to the com station and began typing rapid code.

Hegev snorted without turning from her work. "Mind-Healer, heal yourself. I'm here to make sure you idiots have the equipment you need to keep other idiots from dying, not to make com calls for you. You don't pay me nearly enough to make me deal with hysterical sick people -- besides, I'd just insult them."

"And for some reason, the rest of the galaxy doesn't appreciate a good argument," Jayavanti added as the bridge door slid open, admitting Zhi-ren, Nico, and the captain.

This time, Hegev turned to smile over her shoulder, the tip of one tusk peeking between her lips. "You're learning, Jaya. Anyway, I'm done. I don't know what dilapidated excuses for equipment they have down there or even if anyone's listening, so I set the com to broadcast on all radio and subspace frequencies. If we're lucky, something will get through."

As Elakwa began the standard hailing protocol, Hegev settled against the doorframe next to Jayavanti, allowing the more senior crewmembers to move forward and listen in on Elakwa's half of the conversation.

"Tea?" Jayavanti asked, proffering her mug.

Hegev wrapped her thick fingers around the base of the mug rather than try jamming them through the handle. "Lapsang Souchong?" she asked after she took a sip. Jayavanti nodded. "Excellent. You can go brew a second cup if you need more caffeine. I claim this one as spoils of war."

Jayavanti tried to look like this hadn't been her secret plan all along. Judging by the amusement in Hegev's space-dark eyes, she was fairly sure Hegev saw right through her.

She straightened and did her best to listen to Elakwa's conversation instead of distracting herself from the horrors that probably awaited down on the planet's surface.

The longer she listened, though, the less sense the situation seemed to make. Elakwa couldn't seem to get through a single sentence before the person on the other end of the line interrupted her, over and over.

She bent down and murmured into Hegev's ear, "I'm not sure you would have done any worse. Maybe insults would have shut the colonists up long enough for Elakwa to get a word in edgewise before she explodes from frustration."

At the com console, Elakwa closed her mouth with a huff, cut off once again.

"No, no, that's not frustration you're seeing. That's just her normal expression," Hegev disagreed. "Mind-Healer Baerdi thinks we're all idiots."

"Not all of us. She likes Zhi-ren," Jayavanti said, then added in a tone of syrupy innocence, "Which is, of course, an obvious sign of grave mental illness."

Hegev snorted with laughter, the deep wrinkles around her snout crinkling further in her amusement. "I don't know, he's not a complete waste of oxygen. I wouldn't mind practicing new braid styles with his hair before I try them backwards on my own head. Though I suppose if I shaved him and turned his hair into a wig, I'd get the same advantage without his mouth around to spoil my fun."

"Denigrate me some other time, ladies," Zhi-ren called from the front of the bridge, where he was lounging against the nav console. "It looks like we're in business. _Finally_."

Everyone stared expectantly at Elakwa as she closed the radio link and took off the headset. "Well?" asked Kath. "Was it a false alarm?"

Elakwa dropped the headset on the com station and pinched the bridge of her nose as if warding off a stress headache. "No. There's a plague and the mortality rate is a hundred percent so far. They just don't want treatment."

Jayavanti blinked. "I'm sorry, what?"

"They don't want treatment," Elakwa repeated. "The colony council started by denying the presence of a plague. When I played the distress call, the main council representative lost his temper and shouted incoherent nonsense, such as his refusal to accept 'unnatural interference in God's plan for the world,' and his rejection of 'medicines tainted by alien lies.'" Elakwa frowned. "I resent that. Bad science aside, what is it about Terrans that makes you so _provincial?_ "

"It's a general species survival trait: suspicion of strangers keeps a population from being killed or driven out of prime territory," Nicholas Siddig said dryly, looking up from the padd on which he'd been reviewing the list of diagnostic questions for victims and their families. "Don't pretend otherwise, Elakwa. You Betazoids are just as bad in your own way -- or would you be willing to bring a non-telepath home to meet your family?"

Hegev's eyes glinted in anticipation as she drew breath to say something inflammatory. Jayavanti hastily tapped her foot against Hegev's ankle. "Not now," she whispered. "Argue later."

Elakwa pursed her lips, but didn't contest Nico's point. "Returning to the subject, the colonists are rejecting treatment. They also claim that we invented the distress call as a way to sneak 'alien filth' and 'Federation dictators' onto their world and destroy their way of life."

This time, nobody laughed.

Jayavanti blinked again. She couldn't have heard that right. "That's-- I can't believe-- we have the transmission on record!" she said, waving a hand for emphasis. "People are dying! Why would they lie about that?"

Nico shrugged. Zhi-ren snorted. Elakwa raised her eyebrows. Kath favored her with a sympathetic look.

Jayavanti growled. "Okay, stop making fun of the rookie. What am I missing?"

"New and exciting form of human perversity, probably," Hegev said. "Captain? You said you were looking into the planet."

Captain Inez Castaño leaned back in her command chair and rubbed her eyes before answering. "Yes. I'd never heard of Simplicity, and it turns out there's a good reason for that. The colony was founded several generations ago, before the Federation had any organized bureaucracy dealing with exploration, terraforming, and colonization. And they fell off our maps very much on purpose."

"Separatists, then," Nico said. "I hate separatists. They make everything a hundred times more complicated than it needs to be."

"Preaching to the choir," Jaheim said. "What kind of separatists, though? Religious or political?"

"Religious. Simplicity is populated by a fundamentalist Christian sect known as Cordites, who eschew both modern technology and contact with other species." Inez glanced down at her padd, referring to her notes. "The sect was founded about a decade after First Contact by a Keith and Yoo-Lim Spencer, who took the names Nathaniel and Rebecca Cord and made several failed attempts to legally bar all non-humans from Earth. After their deaths, their daughter Miriam led the sect into space to create their version of paradise from scratch on a new planet."

"Okay, and so?" said Jayavanti, when the rest of the explanation wasn't immediately forthcoming. Sometimes the captain thought she'd given enough information for people to follow her thoughts to their logical conclusion, but Jayavanti didn't have two decades of deep space experience to help her connect the dots. She still needed the steps filled in.

Inez touched the small crucifix around her neck and sighed. "And for the first generation, that's fine. If consenting adults want to go off and peacefully deny reality, it's nobody else's business. The real trouble with utopian and separatist experiments generally starts in the second or third generation. If the colony doesn't have a way to accommodate dissenters, the resulting social tangles range from suppression and shunning up to imprisonment or exile, or even outright slaughter and civil war in a few particularly nasty cases."

"So we were called unofficially," said Jayavanti.

"Possibly by an organized faction, but more likely by one or two lone dissidents," Inez agreed. "As neutral agents, we're legally bound to answer any distress call whether the colony government wants us here or not. Once we're on the ground, we are obligated to offer treatment to all the colonists."

"But they're not obligated to accept, and their government isn't obligated to help us, either," added Jahiem. "Kath and I saw this once in a separatist Andorian colony. Their leaders died rather than accept help from anyone even tangentially associated with the Federation. They hid their children so we couldn't rescue them as minors incapable of making an informed rejection of treatment. Nearly all the citizens went along with their government, no matter how many times we told them they couldn't be punished for choosing to live."

He closed his eyes as if reliving the memory. "Kiir-senthis has an eighty percent infection rate in the unvaccinated, a forty percent fatality rate when untreated, and nearly half the survivors have broken bones, snapped tendons, and crippling joint damage from the convulsions."

Zhi-ren hissed through his teeth. "Crazy bastards."

"They thought their principles were worth dying for. We didn't agree, but all we could do was watch." Jaheim spread his hands, looking pained.

Kath caught his left hand in hers and twined their fingers together. "On the other hand," she said, "if the Cordites' governing council actively gets in our way -- if they block us from offering help to every individual colonist -- that breaks Federation laws on sentient rights and we can put the fuckers under citizens' arrest, pending Starfleet's arrival. Of course, the rights code binds _us_ too. If we break it in any fashion the Cordites can and will kick us off-planet in a heartbeat."

She stared at Jayavanti and Hegev, the two new crew members on this patrol. "Hold your tempers, don't touch anyone without explicit permission, and don't enter homes without the residents' permission, no matter what you see or hear from inside. Got it?"

"Yes," said Jayavanti.

Hegev drummed her thick, glassy fingernails against the doorframe, processing. "One question. These colonists are Terran-human only and want to get away from other views and other peoples. First, that's _crazy_ , but more important, what about me and Mind-Healer Baerdi? Will our presence poison them against you?"

Kath and Inez exchanged a speaking glance. "Normally I'd say the devil take their sensibilities and bring you both down, but there's a good chance they would decide to die rather than let non-humans treat them," the captain said after a moment. "We need to keep quarantine protocol anyway, so I'll leave you up here to mind the ship, Hegev. The rest of us will keep quiet about you and Elakwa will have to pass as human for a while. It's not a good solution, but it's the best we can do under the circumstances. Clear?"

Hegev stamped irritably on the deck, but she nodded her agreement. "One-voiced _fools_ ," she muttered to Jayavanti. "Even children know what I see isn't what you see, and if we look in different directions we'll know more than if we all stare at the same thing! Where's the sense in making everyone think and speak and act all the same, like insects too dumb to know better?"

"Who knows?" Jayavanti whispered. "But shush, the captain's standing."

Inez clapped her hands, calling for attention. "Okay, people. Here's the plan. Jayavanti, have the _Jade Lily_ ready to detach in thirty minutes. Ground crew is Nico, Zhi-ren, Elakwa, Jayavanti, and me. Nico, you're in the auxiliary lab; the rest of you are with me on civilian interface, treatment, and sample collection. Full quarantine protocol.

"Kath, Hegev, and Jaheim remain on the _Amber Lotus_ as backup in case of containment breach. Jaheim, make sure Kath remembers to eat and sleep. Hegev, sync the lab computers between the _Lotus_ and the _Lily_ so all data is shared.

"Use the 'fresher, grab your kits, and get your pressure suits on. Drowning in your own blood is an ugly way to die, and the last thing we can afford to do is to catch this bug ourselves before Nico and Kath figure out how to kill it. Clear?"

"Clear," Jayavanti said, in chorus with the rest of the crew.

Inez nodded. "Good. Thirty minutes to departure. Get moving."

The crew scattered.

Thirty-five minutes later, Jayavanti piloted the _Jade Lily_ out of the _Amber Lotus_ 's starboard shuttlecraft bay. "Call if you needs us, and Penek's luck be with you all," Hegev said over the com, her voice wreathed in subtle trails of static.

"Roger," Jayavanti said. In a corner of the shuttlecraft's main viewscreen, the rear projection showed the _Amber Lotus_ dwindling in the distance as she dropped toward the planet's surface.

She wondered how long, if ever, until she saw that view repeated in reverse.

Then the first shocks of atmospheric entry hit the hull, and more immediate concerns demanded her attention.

\---------------

\---------------

**Five Days Before:**

The skinny blond teenager had been hanging around the shallow, glassy dish of the _Jade Lily_ 's landing site for hours now, skulking in the shade of a greenish-purple bramble bush. Jayavanti bet he thought he was being unobtrusive -- and maybe he was, among this collection of farmers and fishers -- but she'd grown up in Manhattan, and nobody ever really lost the city-dweller's wary eye for shifty human behavior. Especially shifty behavior from a young man dressed all in black and wearing ominously heavy boots.

She ignored the idiot long enough to get into the _Jade Lily_ 's sterile lab with her latest set of sample vials. They shouldn't have needed such old-fashioned diagnostic techniques, but there was more to the sensor static around the planet than they'd assumed. The soil and water were laced with a peculiar mineral salt compound that, although otherwise innocuous, got into the colonists' bones and distorted tricorder scans. And the Cordites wouldn't allow autopsies. So Zhi-ren, Elakwa, and the captain were doing manual examinations and administering broad-spectrum antibiotic and antiviral hyposprays, while Jayavanti took blood samples, phlegm samples, urine samples, stool samples, and whatever else she could persuade out of the victims and their families. Hopefully Nico and Kath could get some answers soon and they could bring Jahiem down here to help deal with stubborn patients.

Nico was in the middle of his afternoon salah, his hair damp as he knelt and stood and occasionally muttered in Arabic, facing the corner of the lab that currently best approximated the direction of Earth. Jayavanti knew better than to distract him; he hated having to start over and lose more research time. She tucked the sample box into the refrigerator and left the padd with the provenance data on his work table where he'd see it when he finished.

Then she cycled back through the airlock and strode across the clearing, aiming right for the nuisance. "I know you're there," she told him. "Are you sick? Have you been tested?"

The boy gulped, his prominent Adam's apple bobbing in his freckled throat. He had a broad nose, wide cheekbones, chapped lips, and no idea what to do with his hands and feet. On close inspection, he looked a bit older than Jayavanti had thought -- about eighteen or twenty, the same age as her little brother Rajesh. If Simplicity were a saner world, he should have been in college, leaning to be a responsible adult. Instead he was backed up against a tree, twitching like a purse-snatcher facing an angry cop. "I-- am I-- no," he said after a long moment. "I thought--"

Jayavanti tapped her foot. Even with the carefully transparent and non-reflective facemasks, pressure suits were intimidating, but she didn't much care. This colonist was _annoying_. She wanted him off balance. "First, are you of age as your government counts it?"

"Yes?" the idiot ventured.

"Good. Do you disapprove of what we're doing?"

"Do I-- no! How could I disapprove?" He drew himself up in indignation, all elbows and angles. "I _summoned_ you. The Elders refused to hear reason no matter how many innocents died, but the Gospels say God loves us. No loving God would hand us the means to save ourselves and forbid us to call for aid!" His righteousness deflated somewhat as he added, plaintively, "I want to leave this place, whatever else happens. Would it be-- may I go with you, when you fly away?"

Jayavanti blinked. Oh. Score one for Inez's lone dissident theory... though there had been signs, in body language, in word choice, and in their landing site itself -- the clearing's shape and soil texture were suspiciously reminiscent of the aftermath of a multiple phaser overload explosion -- that the colony was less unified than the Cordites' governing council claimed.

She softened her tone. "Unfortunately, no. The Interstellar Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies is pledged not to interfere in the internal politics of any world or species. We bring supplies and medical aid to natural disasters, conflict sites, and disease outbreaks. That's all. We can transmit a message to the Federation requesting diplomatic refuge for you, but there's no way to tell how that will turn out. Nevertheless, thank you for sending the call. It can be hard to go against authority, but saving lives is never wrong."

Jayavanti hesitated, wondering about the advisability of her idea in light of the colonist's request. But he did remind her of Rajesh, all wounded dignity, religious fervor, and a desperate need to be useful. So she made the offer anyway: "Would you like to help us?"

The boy gaped. Then he bowed from the waist, hands splayed flat and open at his sides. "Thank you! Thank you forever! I'm Adam Fisher, and my hands are yours until the day's-- no, until the _plague's_ ending. I offer freely, and ask no payment."

"Great," said Jayavanti. "Your first job is to help us get every village and homestead onto our map so we don't miss any patients by accident." Lifesign readings were all well and good, but it was always better to calibrate them against what people said should be there -- especially when natural deposits of that unknown mineral distorted the _Amber Lotus_ 's sensors just as readily as they screwed around with tricorder readings.

Would it be easier to get Hegev to beam down a map, or should she piece one together from printouts and let Adam mark that up first? Pondering her options, Jayavanti stepped into the shadow of the forest and strode toward the village of Providence, which lay a polite quarter-mile away, on the other side of a low hill and a stretch of unfarmed land from the _Jade Lily_. Adam Fisher trailed after her like a worshipful puppy.

Under other circumstances, Jayavanti might have enjoyed the walk. Simplicity was a beautiful planet, if just alien enough to keep surprising her with subtle unfamiliarity. The native trees grew in lush clusters festooned with flowering vines and epiphytes, while tangles of moss and shrubs thrived in the dappled shade cast by layers of purple-tinted leaves. The native wildlife seemed to mostly be insects or reptile-analogues: scales and frills abounded, even on animals that otherwise resembled small mammals or birds. Behind her, the sheltered bay that held Providence's small fishing fleet was clear and warm in the summer sun, and a sea-breeze blew off the water to caress the _Jade Lily_ before rustling the trees.

But beauty was only one face of this planet.

The other was the ever-growing graveyard on the far side of the village, which had outgrown its cobblestone walls and swallowed half of what had been a sizeable hayfield.

Two and a half thousand people already dead, they'd estimated. Two and a half thousand people -- half of them children, a percentage far higher than random chance -- who'd died in terrified, delirious agony, writhing on their sickbeds as they drowned in their own blood. And Nico and Kath had no answers: whatever was causing this, it was completely new.

"You can't have known how bad this was going to get at the start," she said, turning slightly to address Adam Fisher as they walked toward the town. "How long did you wait before calling us?"

"Two weeks," he said. "I-- an early summer cough is not unknown. Even spots of blood, and some years a handful of people die of it, if they're already weak. Three years ago the cough was bad and nearly thirty died around Loving-Kindness, but two years ago the cough was light, and last year the deaths were scattered and only a dozen died. I thought this might be a bad year, at first, with the deaths centered around Providence, but then the Council of Elders sent word that nearly a dozen had died in _every village_ , and I knew I had to live up to my parents' legacy and do something besides pray."

Jayavanti expected him to continue -- he had the attitude of a person who'd been saving up a rant for a very long time -- but just then they broke through the last screen of trees and onto the dirt road leading from Providence to its harbor and he fell silent like the gods themselves had pushed a mute button.

Jayavanti sympathized.

The village itself wasn't remotely impressive. In fact, if the Cordites hadn't told her, Jayavanti would never have known it was the planetary capital. Before the plague, Providence might have held seven hundred people at most, supported in modest comfort by its fields, orchards, and harbor, and it didn't have any especially notable buildings. Instead, the village was laid out in the Cordites' standard grid pattern, centered around a stand of skinny purple-leafed trees in an open square. According to the captain, the trees were symbolic of the garden of Eden. Jayavanti thought they looked like a colorblind attempt to recreate Central Park in miniature, without the lakes and bicycle paths.

The meetinghouse stood on the east side of the garden square, the council house and a small building with a radio antenna and a hand- or fire-powered generator stood to the west, the school to the north, and a row of storehouses to the south. The meetinghouse was by far the largest building, completely open inside and built to hold the entire village population at once. It would make a perfect field hospital if the Cordites' governing council would let the Red Cross use it.

None of that explained Providence's impact.

The lack of people, though, was like a punch in the gut.

Logically, Jayavanti knew the remaining healthy adults were out working in the fields or indoors tending to their stricken relatives, but she couldn't help feeling that she was walking through a ghost town. The occasional sinuous, scaled native scavengers that roamed the streets, both with and without collars, only added to the impression -- like dogs gone feral after their owners' deaths.

Inside the council house, she followed the sound of raised voices to the latest argument over the field hospital issue. Jayavanti knocked on the door, then lifted the latch and swung it open. Seven men and women, the variety of their heights, ages, and skin colors flattened by the relentless sameness of their green and brown tunics and trousers, sat in an arc around a circular table. Captain Castaño sat on the other side, isolated by several empty chairs to her left and right. Her silvery pressure suit seemed painfully bright in the dim, wooden room.

"Nurse Chatterjee," the captain said, her expression carefully controlled. "I presume you have an important reason for interrupting."

The seven Cordite Elders stared disapprovingly at Jayavanti, who wished she could beam out to the safety of the _Amber Lotus_ and the comfort of Hegev's company. But she forced her feet to stay still. "Yes, captain. This is Adam Fisher; he's offered to help us." She reached back through the doorway and dragged the suddenly reluctant Adam into the room.

A woman with a graying braid and teak-colored skin and stood and slammed her hands on the table. "No," she said firmly. "Do you see? Not only are they ensnared by the devil's tools, not only do they consort with aliens, now they make common cause with apostates and traitors. If any among us are so untrusting in God's mercy as to accept poisoned aid from these starfolk, they can do so in their own homes, so only houses already stained by doubt will be further defiled by technology and alien tricks. We cannot allow this poison into God's own house."

The other men and women at the table exchanged considering looks, some leaning over to murmur privately amongst themselves. Then the pale, broad-faced man at the center of the arc stood and spread his hands. "Fra Treefell is correct," he said in a hoarse, rasping voice. "Fra Castaño, your request is refused. Do not ask us again." He coughed, raising a square of undyed cloth to his mouth; it came away stained with blood. "Go," he said, as one of his fellow Elders helped him retake his seat.

"I'm sorry we couldn't reach an agreement, Mer Tinsmith," Inez said, "but I thank you for your time." She stood, nodded her head in the barest gesture of polite respect, and strode out of the room. Jayavanti and Adam trailed in her wake.

"You two have cost us a field hospital, and quite possibly ruined our chances at setting up hospitals in any other village," the captain said as she pushed open the door to the outside. "Nurse Chatterjee, take this as a lesson. Mer Fisher, I hope you have some knowledge or skills that will compensate even a fraction. Also, I'd prefer not to make more errors through ignorance. Explain what your culture means by apostasy "

Jayavanti winced, and Adam gulped audibly. "Ah. Well. The council meets to divine God's will, and those who defy God -- unrepentant sinners -- are apostate." He gestured at himself. "We must wear black, to show the stain on our souls, and boots so our feet never touch God's earth. And the council takes our names. My name is Adam Fisher, because fishing is what I do. But they call me Adam Sand, to show that I'm unfit soil to nurture God's word." He scowled. "They took my parents' names too, for resisting the purge just before I was born."

"The purge?" Inez asked.

Adam's scowl deepened, furrowing his forehead and narrowing his dark eyes. "Seventeen years ago, alien filth came from the skies and attacked us. They had skins as green as envy and hearts as black as sin. They razed three of our towns, stole hundreds of our people, and ruined acres of good farmland to carry off the rocks under the soil. Eventually the wardens -- the ones who still learned the secrets of the devil's tools -- raised the old starships against them and saved us. But the Council of Elders decreed the aliens were a scourge sent by God as punishment for harboring forbidden technology even after this world was shaped to our hands. They destroyed everything, though the starships were the only thing standing between us and slavery if the aliens return to seek vengeance. They killed my parents!" His footsteps fell harder, heavy boots stamping vengefully into the hard-packed dirt of the town streets.

"It must have been hard growing up without them," Jayavanti said.

"It was hard growing up as a marked sinner," Adam said bitterly. He gestured at his clothes again. "I wore these all my life for no reason. The Elders said it was God's vengeance, but this shunning is not from God. It's from _them_ , though Christ commanded humans to forgive! So when I was old enough, I decided to earn my black. I'm not sorry I broke the rules. I'm not sorry I called you. I hate them all, but I'm giving them the mercy they would not give to me."

"Commendable, I'm sure," said Inez as they arrived back at the _Jade Lily_. "I'd invite you inside, but we're maintaining strict quarantine protocols and you've been exposed to the plague. Jayavanti, wait out here with Mer Fisher while I update the others and call IRC headquarters and Starfleet Medical. If we can't get local government cooperation, we'll need a lot more people on the ground to keep the situation from spiraling into disaster. In half an hour, the three of us will beam out to Temperance to see if we can talk their council into letting us set up a hospital, while Elakwa and Zhi-ren continue to make overtures to individual families here. Then we'll hit Grace, and, if there's still time, Obedience."

The captain clicked the remote access button on her pressure suit and vanished into the airlock.

Adam turned to Jayavanti, his dark eyes alight with curiosity. "Are hospitals so important? What are they?"

"Um," Jayavanti said, feeling completely at sea. She had gotten used to the lack of infrastructure and the thinness of technological resources on the colony worlds the _Amber Lotus_ had visited so far, but this was ridiculous. And these people had crippled their world deliberately! "A hospital is a place where more than one doctor -- you do have doctors, right?"

"People who treat injuries? And headaches, and colds?" Adam ventured. "Who ease the pain of cancer and death?"

"Yes, among other things," Jayavanti said. No mention of other diseases? The Cordites must have done extensive screening and general decontamination before they set foot on their new world, if they'd weeded out everything but the common cold and the inevitable accidents and cancers. Pity it wouldn't last more than another generation or two; something would mutate to fill the empty ecological niches.

Or rather, something already had.

She did her best to explain. "On worlds with more people, there are often more problems than one doctor can manage alone. A hospital is a building where doctors can work together and treat many people at once, without wasting time going from house to house. We were hoping to bring all the people with plague together like that."

It would also have been easier to set up a single field generator than to install tiny solar units in each household that accepted their aid. Jayavanti wanted to kick herself for barging into that meeting. If she hadn't offered to let Adam help, or had just waited ten minutes...

People were going to die _directly_ because of her.

She wanted to sink into the dirt and negate herself.

But that wouldn't help anyone. Like Kath said, she had to focus on being useful -- on doing whatever possible to save whoever she could -- and there was no time for recriminations now. She could break down afterwards.

Her suit com crackled and then Hegev's voice grumbled in her ear. "Heads up, Jaya. Beaming in twenty seconds. I'm routing you via the transport pad in the _Sapphire Rose_ , which I sealed off from the rest of the ship. Grab the colonist so he doesn't panic, okay? And good luck. Beaming in six, five, four, three, two, one--"

The world dissolved in sparkling light.

\---------------

**Four Days Before:**

Another two people dead, drowned in their own blood. And that was just in Providence; the other seventy-three villages were losing people at similar rates, according to the radio transmissions Hegev was intercepting. A hundred and fifty people dying in agony each day.

It was too soon to tell if the respirators would sustain the few people they'd managed to persuade to try them out. Jayavanti hoped they would work, and hoped that keeping people alive even one extra day would be enough to let their immune systems rally and fight the plague whether or not Nico and Kath found a chemical cure.

She didn't think they'd be that lucky, though.

Jayavanti looked over the brief case studies Zhi-ren had coaxed from a few victims' families and groaned. These reports were _useless_. They needed autopsies, but cutting up dead bodies was anathema to the Cordites. Stupid really -- even assuming life after death, what was the point of saving a corpse? The self didn't need discarded flesh. But the captain was trying hard not to lose what little cooperation they'd wrung from the various village councils.

Behind her Nico cursed at yet another test result, his voice slurring with fatigue. Jayavanti spun her chair around and frowned. He'd been up nearly twenty-four hours straight and he looked awful. But he'd waved off all her suggestions to go eat or sleep, and she couldn't order him out. For one thing, he outranked her, and for another, well, she just couldn't. She could boss Zhi-ren or Hegev around for their own good, but everyone else was still too intimidating.

Jayavanti gnawed her lip, wondering if it might be justifiable to ambush Nico with a sedative hypospray and drag him out of the lab for his own good. Maybe she should just report the situation and let the captain deal with it? But no, Inez had too much to worry about already; surely she wouldn't mind if Jayavanti managed this one problem for her. Or wait, what if she called up to the ship? Kath would be busy, but Jahiem could probably talk Nico into remembering his own health.

Jayavanti was about to hit the com button and open a channel when Nico leaped up from the lab station, padd clutched in his hands.

"It's not a plague!"

Jayavanti blinked. Had he gone delirious from sleep deprivation? "What do you mean, not a plague? Aren't the dying people enough evidence?"

Nico waved the padd at her. "Yes, yes, of course it's a plague in the non-technical sense. Death, destruction, blah, blah, blah. The point is, it's not caused by a bacterium or a virus. We're dealing with a native parasite that's only just jumped the genetic barrier and learned to survive in human blood. Do you remember Adam Fisher's story about early summer coughs? That's the original version of the parasite, dying of starvation or chemical imbalances because it tried to set up shop in an incompatible host. That version is still around -- Kath found two varieties, and one's practically inert in all her samples -- but sometime in the last few years a second strain evolved and spread, and it's deadly. Given another few centuries the worms and Cordites would probably reach an equilibrium with each other, but the way it's going, the blighters will finish all the humans off within the year."

He pointed at the padd. "Kath just isolated the microfilarial form. Take a look."

Jayavanti plucked the padd from Nico's hands and winced at the image of the parasite. Magnified to visibility, it was ugly as a demon: all writhing, corkscrewed tail and gaping mouth surrounded by jagged bumps. Two bruise-colored tendrils trailed back along its length like decorative ribbons.

"What's the transmission vector?" she asked, as she hit the com button three times, alerting the others of a new development in the lab. "Can you kill it?"

Nico raked his hands through his graying hair and frowned. "Not yet, but we _will_ find a way. As for vector, I'd guess insects or soil -- it's summer, after all -- but don't hold me to that."

Jayavanti's blood ran cold. "Oh. Oh, strike me blind, I'm an idiot. Nico, the children got sick first -- not the babies, not the teenagers, just the kids too young for school or work, but too old to be carried. They go barefoot." And most adults wore sandals, to keep themselves closer to the earth; closed shoes were reserved for particularly dangerous jobs, or for apostates like Adam.

Nico hissed between his teeth. "Shite. Zhi-ren just gave me numbers: this many deaths, that many live cases, average time from symptom onset to death. Tell me about the people, Jayavanti. How many children dead? And how many parents _letting it happen?_ "

Too many. Always, too many.

"Nico, please stop thinking about it," she said. "You need to get some sleep. You can't help anyone if you're too tired to see straight. Kath is fresher; let her keep going. Now that we know what to look for, I'll start concentrating worms for you to test treatments on tomorrow."

Nico lunged from his chair. "I can't sleep now. Children are dying, Jayavanti! You haven't seen how bad an untreated plague can get. You don't understand! If this gets as bad as Viridian, or Temris--"

He grabbed for the padd, but Jayavanti stepped back toward the door, keeping it out of his reach.

"No! I know it's my first year on a first response ship, but I'm a trained nurse and I know sleep deprivation when I see it. You need to get some rest or I'll have to report you to Inez for dereliction of duty. You can't do anything for a few hours anyway. We have to get the worms ready first."

The door chime sounded, and Inez leaned into the lab, the hood of her pressure suit hanging loose down her back. "I got your com. Is everything all right in here?" She looked over Nico and Jayavanti -- one looming, the other retreating -- and raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Do I want to know?"

Jayavanti closed her eyes for a second, wishing Hegev would beam her out to safety, but no, she was still in the lab, backed against the doorframe with Nico invading her personal space like a scene from a soap opera. And Inez was still looking at her expectantly.

"Um. Kath isolated the plague agent," Jayavanti said, holding the padd toward Inez as a peace offering. "It's a native blood-borne parasite. Nico and I think it lives in the soil or in burrowing insects. Hey, Nico, I didn't check the magnification -- is the transmissible form small enough to get through unbroken skin, or does it need an opening?"

Nico blinked, pulled off his glasses, and rubbed at his eyes. "The magnification is-- I think--" He paused, then stepped back and assumed a neutral stance under Inez's cool gaze. "It probably needs cuts and scrapes for entry, or insect bites. I suspect it can transmit further through direct blood-to-blood contact, but I'm not certain about other bodily fluids. I _am_ certain it isn't airborne, though, so you lot can leave off the pressure suits."

"Good work," Inez said. "Now get the hell out of the lab, Nico -- you look wrecked. Jayavanti, bring that padd and come with me. We need to pass on any solid data to headquarters, Starfleet Medical, and the Federation CDC. I'm sure we'll be able to crack this sooner or later, but the more input we get, the better."

Jayavanti waited until Nico left the lab. "Sorry," he said as he brushed past her.

She rolled her eyes. "Get some sleep. You're no use to anyone like this."

Then she followed the captain to the _Jade Lily_ 's tiny bridge.

\---------------

**Three Days Before:**

"Haven't you and Kath pinned the little fuckers down yet, Nico?" Zhi-ren asked as he insinuated himself into the lab and lounged against the refrigeration unit. "What are you waiting for, a Nobel Prize?"

Nico lifted his eye from his microscope and favored Zhi-ren with a frosty glance. "A seventy percent reduction in worm concentration isn't anywhere near good enough, and most of the drugs we're testing have nasty side effects at the dosages needed to get even that much effect. I can't speed up the centrifuges or the laws of chemical reactions to suit you. I assure you, it breaks my heart to disappoint your inflated estimate of my talents in that regard."

"Zhi-ren, go eat lunch," Jayavanti added from the other side of the lab. She ran another sheet of failed micro-dishes under the sterilizer, then dumped them into the disposal to be broken down into their constituent molecules. "You're impossible to deal with when your blood sugar's low, and we don't need distractions."

Zhi-ren held up his hands in mock-surrender. "I'm going, I'm going! I just thought you'd like to know how the palliative measures are working." He ticked off the little finger on his right hand. "Point one, Inez told the Providence council about the likely transmission vector, and it turns out this is the high season for some little bugs the Cordites call ankle-biters -- they live in dead leaves under the trees or in fallow fields, mostly -- so ten gets you one the other half of the parasites' life cycle happens in the bugs' guts and mouths."

He touched a second finger. "Point two, everyone's wearing shoes and socks now, but given that we have no idea how long the incubation period is, that's shutting the barn door after the horses stampeded to hell and back." Zhi-ren shrugged. "Still, it's better than nothing."

He ticked off a third finger. "Point three, we still haven't convinced more than a dozen families in each village to let us hook their kids up to respirators, but that's better than only two or three per village yesterday. A few of the furthest-flung settlements are acting more reasonable. In a couple villages we actually got permission to set up hospitals in their meetinghouses, so we have every case hooked up and Elakwa's been giving crash courses in how to change the tubes and page us in emergencies. So that's something. Also, the antibiotics are pretty much eliminating the fever and delirium aspects, so those are probably caused by symbiotic bacteria, not the parasites themselves. That's worth knowing, right?"

"Yes," Nico agreed, without looking up. "I'll pass that on to Kath."

Zhi-ren turned from Nico to Jayavanti. "Point four, that volunteer you dug up, princess -- what's his name, Adam?"

"Adam Fisher," Jayavanti agreed. "Or Adam Sand, if you're talking to anyone in authority."

Zhi-ren laughed softly. "He's crazy, you know. But he knows stuff the colony council would rather forget, like that purge from sixteen years ago, right after the Orion incursion they won't talk about at all. Apparently when the loonies won their civil war, they set their last starship on autopilot and crashed it at sea, trying to get rid of it forever. But this kid, being crazy, kept sailing around the middle of nowhere until he found the damn thing. It landed on a reef so it is, amazingly, half out of the water and its supplementary solar power cells are still functional. That's how he called us -- he got the old subspace com channel to work.

"Anyway, he gave an estimate of the coordinates to Hegev this morning. She matched that to the most likely bit of distortion on the main scanners, and one or the other of them has amazing luck because when she beamed him down, he didn't end up treading water in the middle of nowhere. Now we have an extra shuttlecraft, plus a bunch of outdated first aid kits and heaps of random spare parts. Inez had Hegev beam up all the junk and start turning it into more portable respirators. So hurrah for us."

"Congratulations," Nico said. "Jayavanti, bring up the chemical compositions of 20th- and 21st-century anti-malarial drugs and whatever they used to treat trypanosomiasis. We'll run them individually and in two-agent combinations." He sighed. "Inshallah, one of them will work."

Jayavanti looked over at the centrifuge just as it dinged. "Sure. Hey, Zhi-ren, if you're going to stick around, make yourself useful and decant the worms."

Zhi-ren made a sour face. "What a lovely appetizer. Thanks a million, princess."

Jayavanti smiled at him with false serenity. "Anytime, jackass."

"Shush, both of you," Nico said without looking up from noting the results (or lack thereof) from the latest tests. "Oh, and Jayavanti? Once you have the next trials started, see if you can get samples from any native animals that live in close proximity to the Cordite villages -- or complete specimens, if possible. The more information we have about the parasites' life cycles, the better. Before you start on that, though, ask Kath and Jahiem to look up non-human parasites and their treatments."

Jayavanti frowned in confusion. "Do you mean Earth-native animals or non-Terran sentients?"

"Both. Throw in non-Terran animals too, on lower priority. At the moment, I am grasping at straws," Nico admitted. "I think it's time to call in Starfleet Medical for a full-on human rights intervention, IRC neutrality and colony self-governance be damned. The death rate is picking up as more people hit the end of whatever passes for an incubation period, and from what Elakwa tells me, the social structure of the harder-hit villages is starting to break down. If we don't find an answer soon, we could lose over half the population even if no new patients get infected."

\---------------

**Two Days Before:**

"Thoughts are not speech; speech is not action; only action deserves reaction." Elakwa was leaning against a tree at the clearing's edge as Jayavanti and Adam headed back to the _Jade Lily_ after gathering new blood samples for testing. "Thoughts are not speech; speech is not action--" Elakwa looked up as shards of fused sand clattered under Jayavanti's feet. "Oh, you're back. Where's Inez? Any deaths since noon?"

It was terrible that this had become a routine question.

"None in Providence. I don't know about the other villages," Jayavanti said. "The captain's talking to the Council of Elders about distributing food concentrates to compensate for the villages that don't have enough people left to tend their fields." Because they had died, or were dying, or had collapsed with grief for the deaths of their children, their siblings, their parents. But if she thought about that too long and hard, she would collapse as well.

She focused on Elakwa instead. "You look like shit. Is there anything I can do? Has anyone threatened you?"

Elakwa grimaced and unpinned her hair from its fraying bun. "Not aloud, no. So far, only a handful even suspect my species. These humans think of other species as monsters. I don't match their image of a monster -- to be specific, I'm neither a Vulcan nor an Orion -- so to their minds, I must be human." She raked her fingers through her curly black hair, pulling stray wisps back into the main mass, and swiftly wound it back into its imprisoning coil. "I never thought I would be grateful for idiocy. But sometimes they think of 'alien worlds,' 'inhuman monsters,' and 'tainted machines' so hard they might as well be screaming in my face, and it's difficult to keep my patience and charity."

 _Especially when I am already so tired of holding shields against grief and rage and despair_ , Elakwa's thoughts continued, whispering dully in the back of Jayavanti's mind. _Two murder-suicides in Bethel yesterday, parents mercy-killing their children and then themselves. I could have stopped them all if I had been there in time._

Jayavanti wondered if Elakwa had meant to broadcast that last thought. But before she could work out a polite way to ask, Adam gasped, as if Elakwa's spoken words had suddenly resolved from meaningless noise into a horrible kind of sense.

"You're an _alien?_ " he said, stumbling back, his feet skidding on the glassy earth. "And you-- you read minds! Are you reading mine now? Get out! Stay away!"

Jayavanti shoved her sample box into Elakwa's hands and snatched the other out of Adam's arms, which promptly snapped up to shape a rough, defensive cross. "Adam, shut up and put your hands down. Yes, Mind-Healer Baerdi is from Betazed. Yes, she's a telepath. But she doesn't want to know what you're thinking and she does her best not to know. I have it on good authority that human minds are dreadfully tedious, primitive, repressed, neurotic, and hormone-addled."

"Only most humans minds. Zhi-ren is delightfully free of the typical human sexual neuroses, and you are occasionally sweet in your naivety and your concern for Hegev," Elakwa said, bestowing a wry smile on Jayavanti. "Mer Fisher, get over yourself and resume acting like a theoretically rational person. You knew your Elders were talking nonsense when they forbade you to call for help. Has it never occurred to you that they might have been wrong about other things as well?"

Adam looked from Jayavanti to Elakwa and back again, lowing his arms a few inches. "Ah..."

Jayavanti took pity on him after several seconds. "Go think it over, Adam. Mind-Healer Baerdi and I will take care of the samples."

After a moment, Adam lowered his arms and nodded. "I won't tell the Elders. Yet. They wouldn't listen to me anyway," he added as he stomped away toward the ocean, shadowless in the combined light of the sun and the glowing rings that arched across the northern sky.

Jayavanti wasn't so sure about that assessment -- people would listen to vicious rumors from all kinds of sources, including their sworn enemies, and the Cordites were ripe to pin their losses on a scapegoat -- but she bit her tongue. The more bitter Adam felt toward the Council of Elders, the more he was likely to accept Elakwa, if only to spite their teachings.

"I feel embarrassingly unprofessional," Elakwa said as she followed Jayavanti into the _Jade Lily_. "I made such a fuss about keeping my species secret and then I spilled like a pitcher at the first opportunity." She cradled the sample box in her right arm and pinched her nose with her left hand, as if warding off a stress headache. "That young man has an unusually strong and open mind for a human. Every time I get within a hundred meters of him, I feel as if he's shouting straight into my brain until my skull rattles. If he ever talks his way off this planet, some poor soul will have to teach him psi-shielding techniques before letting him loose into Federation society at large."

"I'm sorry," said Jayavanti. "If I'd known, I would have tried harder to keep him away from the shuttlecraft."

Elakwa waved away Jayavanti's apology. "You're practically psi-null; you had no way of knowing. Forget the Cordite. On a more relevant topic, do we know when our backup is arriving?"

"Oh!" said Jayavanti, instantly dismissing Adam and any thought of who he might tell about Elakwa's non-human status. "Hegev just commed me at breakfast, and I haven't had a chance to tell anyone else. The ship won't arrive until the day after tomorrow -- we're way out on the border, so nobody was nearby. But guess what?"

Elakwa forced her features into a polite mask of curiosity. "What?"

"The closest ship is the _Enterprise_ ," Jayavanti informed her. "The flagship! I never thought I'd actually get to see a heavy cruiser. I thought we'd get a research ship, maybe even a _Soyuz_ -class if Starfleet Medical really decided to throw resources at us. But we're going to meet the people who saved the whole Federation I don't know how many times." She realized she was almost bouncing on her toes, and tried to calm down. Simplicity was dying. This was the least appropriate time in the world for giddy hero-worship.

But still! The _Enterprise!_ Galactic bad luck, infuriating Cordite principles, and the cold logic of patient statistics notwithstanding, she couldn't help a sneaking, irrational conviction that somehow everything would turn out all right now.

The _Enterprise_ specialized in saving lost causes.

"How excruciatingly exciting," Elakwa said tiredly. "I hope their medical staff is as absurdly lucky as the rest of their crew."

"I'm sure they are," Jayavanti said. "Come on, I have to tell Nico and Zhi-ren who's coming. I bet they'll be interested, even if you aren't."

\---------------

**One Day Before:**

" _Dirofilaria immitis_ , otherwise known as heartworms," Nico said, bringing up a display on the _Jade Lily_ 's main bridge screen: the lifecycle of a parasite in sanitized cartoon format.

Zhi-ren looked dubious. "I've never heard of them. You're sure this isn't a practical joke someone slipped into the ship's records?"

"You've never heard of them because you're not a veterinarian and you obviously never had pets," Jaheim said over the com, his voice slightly flattened and laced with static. "They're a canine parasite and they're still all over the place on Earth. They aren't immediately fatal, but they do a real number on a dog's quality of life. A serious infestation can either cause or mimic congestive heart failure."

"In any case," said Nico, talking firmly over Zhi-ren's attempted response, "the parasites we're dealing with--"

"Lung dragons," Kath put in..

"--which Kath insists on calling lung dragons, because her sense of humor is _vile_ ," Nico continued, loftily ignoring Zhi-ren's snicker, "follow a similar life cycle in jack-rats, which are a native Simplicity predator and scavenger that the Cordites have begun domesticating as a stand-in for dogs. The mature parasites live in the heart and release live young into the blood. Those microfilariae migrate to the ankle-biters when the insects take a blood meal from the jack-rats. They undergo at least one molt within the insects' guts or mouths, then migrate back to the jack-rats when the insects take another blood meal. They undergo one further molt in the respiratory system, reenter the bloodstream, and take up residence in the heart."

He pressed a key on his padd, changing the display. "This is an infected jack-rat heart. Note the size and density of the parasites."

Jayavanti shuddered at the image. The lung dragons were even uglier as mature adults than as microfilariae: their mouths had split into multi-hinged pseudo-jaws, and serrated ridges rather like dorsal fins ran along their backs. The tendrils had become blood-red, spotted with leprous green.

"That's what's killing the Cordites?" Elakwa asked. "Why the lung problems?"

Nico smiled mirthlessly. "Heart infection isn't the cause of death. The jack-rats have a drastically different lung structure from humans. Unlike the network of capillaries and alveoli in standard humanoid lungs--"

"Nico, we're doctors. We know how lungs work," said Zhi-ren.

"It's relevant," Nico said shortly. "As I was saying, unlike humans, the jack-rats have a more avian lung structure. Air is processed through a series of sacs, creating a constant, unidirectional flow through the lungs. Gas exchange takes place in a network of tiny passages that connect on both ends to proper bronchial tubes. The point is that the lung dragons are programmed to molt in jack-rat air sacs, which are relatively large and smooth. Because humans lack corresponding air sacs, the parasites attempt to molt in human alveolar sacs. They break the structures in the process."

He pressed a key on his padd, bringing up a black and white computer diagram of a human lung. After a second, tiny spots of red appeared scattered through the illustrated tissue. "When only a handful of lung dragons have survived to that stage, it causes nothing worse than a chest cough and a bit of blood in the throat."

Nico pressed another key, and red blossomed over the display like deadly rain. "A full-scale infestation, though, creates so much scarring and blood that the body can't cope. The victims suffocate and drown in their own blood, whilst suffering fevers and delirium caused by the decomposition of the parasites and the release of their symbiotic bacteria. _That's_ what's killing the Cordites."

There was a solemn pause as the crew absorbed the information.

Inez broke the silence. "Good job. Do you and Kath have a cure yet?"

Nico's smile turned vicious, then fell. "Yes. And no. Ironically, the lung dragons resemble heartworms in more than the location of the mature parasites within the body. Neo-melarsomine, the standard heartworm treatment, is equally effective on both parasites."

"So what are we waiting for?" Zhi-ren asked. "Let's waste the little fuckers."

Jayavanti bit her lip. "But... I thought melarsomine and related chemicals are an awful strain on the system. They're all based on arsenic, aren't they? And the Cordites are so weak and injured already. What if the medicine kills them too?"

"That's the first problem. The second is finding a way to break down the lung dragon's bodies to clear out the alveolar sacs, though for now we can keep patients on respirators for a few weeks while their bodies do that part for us," said Nico. "And this is where Kath and I turn the question over to you lot. You figure out a way to keep the patients alive through the neo-melarsomine regimen. Meanwhile, we'll be looking for a vaccine, faster breakdown methods, and an alternate, less dangerous vermicide." He tapped a few keys on his padd, shutting down the morbid display.

"Nico and I should switch places," Jahiem said over the com. "You need my skills on the surface more than his now."

Inez nodded. "Good call. Kath and Nico will continue researching in orbit, in conjunction with Starfleet Medical. Get Hegev to beam you down ASAP so you can help me coordinate the treatment logistics."

"Yes, ma'am!" said Jahiem. " _Amber Lotus_ out."

Inez swung her chair around to examine the rest of the crew. "That's taken care of. Nico, put together treatment kits until the rest of us head out; then get Hegev to beam you up. Elakwa, Zhi-ren, read up on the administration and side-effects of heartworm treatment and give me some reasonable extrapolations to human bodies. Jayavanti, help Nico. I'll explain the situation to the Cordites. Once preparations are finished, Elakwa, Zhi-ren, Jahiem and I will begin treatment in four of the outlying villages and converge inward toward Providence; Jayavanti, you'll start in Providence and work out in a spiral."

Nico hurried off the bridge, toward his lab. Elakwa and Zhi-ren followed. Jayavanti hesitated, shuffling her feet.

"Yes?" asked Inez.

"What about Adam?" Jayavanti asked. "And the other Cordites who've been learning to tend respirators and so on?"

"Mer Fisher is currently salvaging the ruined starship so Hegev doesn't have to beam up kiloliters of seawater and heaps of useless slag along with useful materials," Inez said. "As for the other Cordites, who do you think will be monitoring the patients once we've begun their treatment?"

Jayavanti wanted to smack herself. "Oh. Right. I'll go help Nico now."

"We'll beam out in one hour," Inez said as she stood from her command chair. "Don't worry. We're over the worst of it now."

\---------------

\---------------

**Five Hours Before:**

The treatment was going... well, it was going, which was about all Jayavanti figured could be said for it. The village councils had put up surprisingly little resistance, even when told the cure might be as deadly as the disease. "It is God's will whether we live or die," Fra Treefell had said as Jayavanti administered a hypospray to her nine-year-old granddaughter. "If your parasites take her, that is fate. If your chemicals take her, that is also fate. Now go; I can change her compresses much better than you."

Jayavanti had left the standard box of instructions and future doses and escaped to the next house as quickly as she could. Now, one day later -- and running on barely five hours of sleep, because nobody wanted to let even one more patient die when they had a potential cure in hand -- Jayavanti was finishing the initial shots in the village of Perseverance. One more household to go, and then she could grab a half hour nap up on the _Amber Lotus_ before Hegev beamed her to the next village.

Her com unit beeped and Jayavanti stopped, leaning against the outside wall of the house she'd just left. She unclipped the com from her belt and flipped it open, glancing at the display to see who was calling. _Hegev nich Tal_ , it said, which was beyond peculiar. Hegev had the _Amber Lotus_ 's systems at her disposal; why would she call on her private com?

"What's gone wrong?" Jayavanti asked, closing her aching eyes for a minute.

"Why do you assume something is wrong -- are you feeling guilty?" Hegev countered habitually, her voice wreathed in static as the signal fought the distorting effect of the omnipresent mineral salt. "But yes. We have a problem."

"I swear the treatments have been working," Jayavanti said. "I _swear_. Please don't tell me the damn parasites have an immunity, or some of the Cordites are refusing the injections."

"It's worse," Hegev said. She paused. The com crackled and hissed into the silence.

The summer sun was bright overhead. There was no reason for Jayavanti's skin to shiver like she'd stepped into a winter wind slicing down a Manhattan avenue. "Just tell me. Reality can't possibly be as bad as my imagination."

"Twenty-two minutes ago, five unidentified starships dropped out of warp on the other side of the star system," Hegev said. "I don't think they saw the _Amber Lotus_ through the distortion effect, and I moved the ship behind the planet, right up into the edge of the equatorial ring. But I think they're Orion Syndicate. And there's no reason for ships to cross into Federation space without broadcasting their identities except piracy -- especially when they look like armed cargo ships about the size of mid-range cruisers."

Jayavanti hissed through her teeth. "Kali dance on their skulls. What did the captain say?"

Orion Syndicate pirates. Syndicate _slavers_ , though you couldn't say that officially without setting off a diplomatic tangle the Federation couldn't afford in the wake of Vulcan's destruction and ongoing tensions with both Klingon and Romulan Empires. And the Cordites had destroyed their own defenses sixteen years ago... but not before hundreds of people had been taken, according to Adam. Jayavanti had thought that just meant captured along with the destroyed villages, but it occurred to her now that he'd probably meant something much worse.

Orion work-slaves had notoriously short lives, since it was cheaper to buy replacements than maintain viable captive breeding populations of multiple species and raise new slaves from birth. They only took the useful; anyone too old, too sick, or too young was simply killed. Involuntarily, Jayavanti wondered what the cut-off age would be. Eight years old? Ten? Twelve? And would slavers kill younger children in front of their families or gather them for a mass execu--

She shook her head, trying to dislodge that train of thought.

Hegev had been quiet way too long. "Hegev? You did tell the captain, right? She and Kath are the ones who have crisis training."

"Yes, yes, I'm not brainless," Hegev said irritably. "They're discussing options on the ship's com, which is why I'm calling you privately. But I know what they'll decide -- I have crisis training too, you silly _mevkich_ \-- and it won't be enough. Listen, Jaya. I already sent out an emergency call on multiple wide vectors. Obviously I couldn't transmit toward the Orions, but I put a beacon buoy into a slingshot orbit; once it gets behind the pirates, it will echo the mayday. Kath and Inez will try stalling, but we've seen the bastards. Sooner or later they'll have to kill us to keep us from revealing their presence in Federation space. And the _Enterprise_ is still nine hours out at maximum warp, even assuming they've already received my mayday."

Belatedly, Jayavanti realized the middle of a public street, however empty, was not the best place to have this conversation, and started hurrying away from the center of Perseverance, toward the rushing stream that powered the flour mill, the saw mill, and the village's single generator. "Get to the point. What do you need me to do?"

"What I need is better distractions," Hegev said. "The _Amber Lotus_ doesn't have weapons, but I can improvise with other things. I can also rig up the _Sapphire Rose_ on autopilot or remote control and play chicken with the pirates. Depending on how broken it is, I might be able to do something similar with the Cordites' old shuttlecraft on the crashed ship. But I can't do all of that alone, and I don't know if I can convince Kath and Nico to help."

"So beam them down and get them out of danger," Jayavanti said. She paused at the edge of the stream, staring blankly at the water as it skipped and sprayed over its uneven bed of stones. "Wait, no. What am I saying? You're going to get yourself killed, and all you'll manage is to make the pirates angry. Besides, the _Amber Lotus_ is unarmed for a reason. The IRC is neutral in regard to political conflicts. We're supposed to help people, not go to war!"

Infuriatingly, Hegev laughed. "I'm not a doctor. I never swore your oaths. And unlike you humans, I'd have to be delirious with fever before I'd think that letting my friends and an entire planet of fools get murdered or enslaved is helpful. Sometimes the best shield is a sharp spear."

"Like the best offer of friendship is an insult? I think you're the one who's delirious," Jayavanti snapped, then winced. "Shit, sorry, I didn't mean that." Then she winced again. Matching insults was a sign of respect, even if she'd mostly done that because she was so tired everything had started to irritate her, but offering an apology for an insult? Stupid, stupid, stupid.

"Don't show me your throat. You meant it. Stand by your words," Hegev said, but she sounded amused, not angry. Tellarites were all crazy. "Anyway, thanks for the suggestion. I'll beam Kath and Nico down when the pirates get closer. I'm fairly sure Zhi-ren, Elakwa, and Jahiem won't help me either, but they're not trained for this kind of thing anyway. They'll be more use treating the Cordites. What I want to know is, will _you_ help me, Jaya? I can't program everything alone and you're the best pilot on this mission."

Jayavanti sat down on a handy stone and wished she'd gotten more sleep last night. She needed to think, needed to be smart and clear-minded, and all she felt was numb, heavy, and angry at the world.

She was a nurse. She didn't fight; she repaired the aftermath of fights. She didn't kill people; she saved them.

But what good would it do to save the Cordites from the lung dragons only to see them enslaved?

Wait. _Wait_. People dying of plague were no use as slaves. And nobody with a drop of sense would land on a plague-infested planet. Inez knew that. There was no point telling the Orions that the plague was really caused by parasites, was in the process of being cured, and might not be cross-species transmissible anyway. Let the lung dragons warn away a greater danger, one disaster scaring off another.

Kali dancing, turning death back on itself.

"Hegev, the captain will tell the Orions that we're dealing with a plague! They'll go somewhere else, and we can let the _Enterprise_ know to keep a closer eye on this region. We'll keep treating the plague. Everything will be fine."

It had to be. She couldn't bear to imagine otherwise.

But Hegev made the rough, coughing sound that meant disagreement. "They don't want slaves," she said, "or at least, I don't think that's their only goal. Think, Jaya. What have we been having problems with ever since we reached Simplicity? Why did it take us so long to figure out the cause of the plague? Why is there so much static on this transmission?"

"That mineral salt thing?"

"Pirates need to hide. How much do you think sensor disruption is worth to them?" Hegev said. "Remember, at least one group of Orions came here on a mining and slave-collecting run seventeen years ago, and I'd bet good money at least some of them survived to plot a return expedition. They won't _care_ about the plague. They can just send down remote-controlled mining bots, or a few soldiers in pressure suits to make the Cordites do the dirty work. If the Cordites die while digging, who cares. Slaves die all the time. And besides, the Orions still have to get rid of any witnesses. Don't you think I wish there was an easy way out? But I can't find one. I'm listening in, and Kath and Inez haven't found one either."

Shit. Shit, shit, shit. What if Hegev was right?

"The least you can do is move the _Jade Lily_ ," Hegev said into the stewing chaos of Jayavanti's thoughts. "Hide it under some trees or right next to a deposit of the chameleonite."

"Chamele-what?"

Hegev laughed, like a ragged mask over desperation. "I've been doing analysis on the 'mineral salt thing,' and it needed a common name. It's not a perfect cloak -- not like Igrul's magic tent that hid him from the ice demons -- but it blurs your edges a bit, like those funny color-shifting lizards you have on Earth. So, chameleonite. If we live through today I'm going to write a paper on it."

"If we live through today I think I'll become devout, because that would be a genuine miracle," Jayavanti said blankly. "I can't just move the shuttlecraft without orders."

"Fuck orders. If you're worried, I'll tell Inez it was my idea and I strong-armed you into agreeing. Once you land, com me and I'll beam you up. If you pilot the _Sapphire Rose_ while I run the _Amber Lotus_ , that gives us a better chance of surviving than if we only have one functional ship."

"What's this 'us' you're talking about?" Jayavanti grumbled, but she stood and slowly walked back into Perseverance. "I have one household left to treat, and then you can beam me out. We'll talk about the rest of your insanity after I've moved the _Lily_."

And after she'd given herself a stimulant hypospray. Today, tea was not going to cut it.

\---------------

**Three Hours Before:**

Jayavanti tried to com Hegev as soon as she landed the _Jade Lily_ in a narrow mountain valley several kilometers past the outer ring of Cordite settlements. She got nothing but static -- not surprising, considering she was apparently parked right on top of a modest chameleonite deposit that Hegev claimed was large enough to hide the shuttlecraft without attracting the Orions' immediate attention.

She locked the door behind her and began walking along the valley, careful not to slip into the stream as the slope steepened. The combined light of the sun and the planetary rings shrank and distorted shadows, which could play havoc with depth perception if she didn't pay close attention.

After a few minutes, she pulled out her com and tried calling again.

"Took you long enough," Hegev said without any pretense at greetings. "Can I beam you up now?"

"No," said Jayavanti, sitting on a rounded boulder at the edge of the stream. "I unloaded all the respirators and medicine doses I could fabricate on short order, but they need to be covered to keep the Orions and the Cordites from getting into them. Has the captain told the Council of Elders about the pirates yet?"

Hegev made a sort of coughing, static-wreathed growl. "Yes. The Cordites went away and shouted for half an hour. Then Fra Treefell told Inez that if it was their god's will for another scourge to strike their people, they would accept his judgment on them -- but they'd let her gather all the patients in the meeting house so they could wait for that judgment together. I don't understand that woman. She's obviously not afraid of a fight, so why won't she argue with her god? Acting spineless is no way to show respect."

Jayavanti shrugged, not interested in listening to another iteration of Hegev's pet diatribe about differing modes of reverence. "Maybe she only argues in private. At least she's finally agreed to setting up a hospital. Anway, beam me back to Providence. The sooner I put things in order there, the sooner I can go check whether the Cordites' old shuttlecraft is still spaceworthy."

"Point. Beaming in three, two, one--"

The valley dissolved in sparkling light, which faded to reveal the main cargo transporter pad in the _Amber Lotus_ 's hold. Hegev stood at the control console, frowning. "I should keep you now that I have you here," she grumbled.

"Hegev."

"Fine, but work fast! Beaming now." The hold faded away, replaced by the bright, glassy clearing between the narrow band of forest and the shore of Providence's sheltered bay. Jayavanti eyed the jumbled piles of medical supplies she'd left at the edge of the trees and sighed. Hegev was right; she couldn't afford to spend much time here.

She spent thirty minutes sorting and stacking crates into more stable piles and covering them with waterproof emergency tent fabric. As she finished weighting down the last corner with shards of glassy stone, someone behind her coughed.

Jayavanti whirled, then let the final rock drop to the ground beside her. It was only Adam. "Don't startle me like that," she said.

He ducked his head apologetically. "Sorry, Fra Chatterjee. But, um, where's your ship? And why won't Fra Tal answer me when I try to call her? She was supposed to transport me back to the old starship to identify more useful material."

Jayavanti leaned against a stack of crates and bit back a groan. She didn't have time to deal with Adam now. On the other hand, it felt wrong to lie to him. And stimulant or no stimulant, she was too tired to think of a way to soften the news. "The _Jade Lily_ is hidden somewhere safe so it won't draw attention to Providence and the rest of my crew will still have transportation once Hegev and I get ourselves blown up," she said. "There's an Orion Syndicate fleet approaching Simplicity. Hegev and I are trying to buy time for Starfleet to come save us, since there's no way we can take out five pirate ships with an unarmed cargo ship and one unarmed shuttlecraft. Right now, I'm making sure these supplies are safe. Then I'm going to beam out to your old starship to see if its shuttlecraft is spaceworthy, after which I'm heading up to the _Amber Lotus_ and get myself killed trying to save you idiots twice over. I hope you appreciate it."

Adam blinked. Then he frowned. "But you have weapons. I think. At least the lights on that panel in the shuttlecraft blink green instead of red, which Fra Tal says means the system isn't broken. The engines are environmental controls are also green. I checked that for her two days ago."

Jayavanti stared at him.

The Cordites' ancient shuttlecraft had functional weapons. Why did it have weapons? Who put weapons on a _shuttlecraft?_ Why hadn't Hegev remembered that? And why--

"Fra Chatterjee?" Adam said, waving a tentative hand near her face. "Are you all right?"

Oh, right, she should be doing something useful with this information. "Hold that thought," Jayavanti said. She pulled her com unit from her belt and flipped it open. "Hegev nich Tal."

She waited all of five seconds before there was a click and Hegev snarled, "Frostbite devour your genitals, what _now?_ "

"We don't have to check the Cordites' shuttlecraft. Adam already knows it's in working order. He also says it has functional weapons of some kind," Jayavanti said. "He says you told him about reading system panels. He says he checked it for you _two days ago_."

There was a long pause. Then, slowly, Hegev said, "I forgot about that. Oops."

"Oops? _Oops?_ " Jayavanti's hand tightened on the edges of her com.

"You're going deaf, how lovely. Change of plan, Jaya! I'll transport you and the idiot colonist to their gutbucket starship, and you're going to fly the shuttlecraft up to hide in the planetary ring. You'll be my third secret weapon."

Jayavanti pulled the com away from her ear and glared at the little rectangle of metal and plastic. She took a deep breath, smiled absently at Adam to show she wasn't angry at him, and tucked the com back against her face. "I'm so glad to be of use!" she said brightly. "What about the _Sapphire Rose?_ "

"There's this marvelous invention called 'autopilot,'" Hegev said, "and also, remote piloting a shuttlecraft should be easy for someone with your scores in MMO space wargames."

"I am going to hit you, I swear," Jayavanti said. "Games are not the same as reality!"

Hegev snorted. "Sure, fine, whatever. You're still the best pilot on the planet. Just grab hold of the Cordite and prepare to beam up. In three, two, one--"

Jayavanti clutched Adam's arm in a punishing grip as the world dissolved around them.

\---------------

**One Hour Before:**

"This ship needs a name," Adam said abruptly, halfway through Jayavanti's attempt to teach him how to run the shuttlecraft's weapons console -- a task made more difficult by her own unfamiliarity with the layout of the ship and the differences between video games and reality.

Jayavanti took a deep breath, held it for a count of five, and said, "Really. Why is that more important than learning how to save our lives?"

"All ships need names," Adam insisted, lifting his hands from the console and looking at Jayavanti as if she were the idiot in this conversation. "It's the worst kind of bad luck to sail a nameless ship and we have enough problems already. If things go wrong on the water, at least there's a chance people can swim to shore. We can't swim in the ocean of space."

"Fine," Jayavanti said after another five-count breath. "I hereby name this shuttlecraft the _Shiva Dances_." She grabbed a canteen from their little pile of emergency supplies and flicked a few drops of water to the deck. "Shakti, great mother, seat of being and becoming, grant us your husband's favor to birth a new day for this world out of our destruction."

Adam looked blank.

"Your religion isn't the only one in the galaxy," Jayavanti said as she snapped the lid back onto the canteen. "I may not believe much in mine, but that doesn't mean I can't take comfort in it when I'm about to die. Now look, let's go over the controls again. This half of the console is for the phasers, which we don't have power for, so ignore all the buttons and levers. This other half is for the photon torpedoes. This shuttlecraft has six torpedoes, three under each wing, and you can target them manually or via this--"

The com console crackled to life, interrupting her lecture. Jayavanti reached over and hit the 'accept call' button. "We're in position and I'm showing Adam the controls. What's the ETA on the pirates?"

"I have no idea," Inez said, startling Jayavanti to full attention. "What I would like to know is what, exactly, you think you're doing up there in stolen property, Nurse Chatterjee."

Jayavanti winced at the coldness of Inez's tone and motioned Adam to silence. "I think I'm doing my job," she said. "You know, saving lives."

"By killing?" Inez asked.

Jayavanti winced again. "I hope not. Hegev's going to try bluffing the pirates away first. If we're lucky, that'll be the end of it. But if I have to? Yes."

"The _Enterprise_ is en route, and there are ways to buy time without jumping straight to violence. The Red Cross exists to alleviate suffering, not to create new damage," Inez said. "We cannot take sides in conflict without betraying our founding principles. We must not become an arm of the Federation."

"It's important to have medical agencies that aren't connected to Starfleet," Jayavanti agreed, her commitment to a two-year tour through the back end of Federation space and various unaligned worlds heavy in her mind. "But the thing is, if the pirates land on Simplicity, there's no guarantee we'd be anywhere near them. How can we stop them from killing and capturing people on one side of the continent if we're hundreds of kilometers away? In space, we can make sure to stand in their way. And I don't know if I'm right, but I can't help thinking that if the people of Simplicity get killed because I stood aside and did nothing, that's just as much a violation of our purpose. What makes the pirates different from the lung dragons? They both take innocent lives."

"The pirates are sentient and can choose to change," Inez said.

"They won't if no one makes them," said Jayavanti. "I'm sorry, Captain Castaño. I have to do this. I resign my position with the IRC; whatever I end up doing today is on me, not you."

She terminated the call.

Adam was watching her with an uncharacteristically blank face, but the set of his shoulders screamed emotional tension. "Your captain doesn't want you to save my people?" he asked.

Jayavanti leaned back in her seat and stared out the viewscreen at the stars shining cold and distant in the endless depths of space. "Captain Castaño is a doctor," she said. "Have you ever heard of the Hippocratic-- no, what am I saying, of course you haven't. She took an oath to save lives from injury and disease, not to be a soldier. If doctors start deciding one person is more worthy to live than another, that's too close to playing a god. And the Red Cross has to remain neutral so we -- so _they_ \-- can help victims on all sides of conflicts."

"But you will fight," Adam said.

"I just quit the Red Cross. I don't have to be neutral anymore. And I'm going to try my best not to kill anyone," Jayavanti said, closing her eyes and rubbing the heels of her hands over her face. "I don't know. I can't just sit back and try to save you idiots from the lung dragons and then not do anything to save you from getting shot or taken into slavery. Ethics are a mess. You have to find your own answer and live with the consequences."

"Or die with them," Adam said.

"Or die with them," Jayavanti agreed. Like her crewmates on the planet might. Like she might. Like Hegev might. Whether they fought or not.

She opened her eyes. "Come on, let's run through the console commands one more time."

\---------------

**One Hour Before:**

Hegev had taken full advantage of the chameleonite's distorting effects to relay the captain's com through the _Amber Lotus_ , thus disguising her actual location. She was also transmitting in all directions so the _Shiva Dances_ could pick up the conversation without engaging directed receivers.

Jayavanti bit her lip as Inez's last efforts to negotiate and stall the pirates fell apart. "Even if your alleged plague can cross species, which is unlikely, we have environmental suits. The welfare of the scum on the surface is irrelevant. Lower your shields for boarding, or prepare to be destroyed," the pirates' spokeswoman said.

"We refuse," Inez said.

"And fuck you," Hegev added, after a small click as she terminated the captain's transmission. "You don't deserve to see my throat, but I'll build a fire from your bones. Jaya, on my mark; you'll know the target." A louder click marked her shift to com silence.

"We will?" Adam asked. "How?"

"Whatever ship Hegev hurts the most before our turn," Jayavanti said. "Please shut up."

She tuned out Adam's restless shifting and concentrated on the sensor readings. 

The _Amber Lotus_ didn't have any conventional weapons, not even the weak phasers a lot of merchant and pleasure starships used to supplement their shields in case they exited warp too close to a debris field or an asteroid too small to register through the distortion of a warp envelope. So Hegev had gotten creative.

She had a tractor beam, a transporter, a replicator, a cargo hold full of machinery and spare parts, an engineering degree, and all the material in Simplicity's ring right at hand.

Now a dozen chunks of rock and ice activated their makeshift thrusters and hurled themselves toward the five Orion ships.

"Will that--?" Adam began, only to fall silent as the pirates' phasers began to vaporize the swarm. Some of the rocks continued on their paths; others zig-zagged; but only a handful survived to impact the ships' shields, where they flared and died without noticeable results.

"The point is to buy time," Jayavanti said. "Nothing we can do will cause much damage. But if we can keep their attention up here, on us, that's more time for your people to evacuate their villages and hide, assuming they come to their senses, and more time for the _Enterprise_ to arrive."

They were all going to die. They were going to die, and none of it would mean anything.

No. She couldn't think like that.

Another swarm of rocks launched themselves out of the planetary ring. The pirate fleet shifted, ships drifting out of their wedge formation into a shapeless, curving wall: the beginning of a net around the area where the _Amber Lotus_ waited.

A third swarm of rocks launched themselves to apparently futile destruction, and the net began to tighten -- leaving both the _Shiva Dances_ and the empty _Sapphire Rose_ beside or behind the Orion fleet. Jayavanti clutched the arm of her chair and checked the laptop console panel Hegev had beamed over and guided her through connecting to the com systems. The _Sapphire Rose_ 's diagnostics read green, and at these distances, there was hardly any lag in ordinary lightspeed signals. She could put the shuttlecraft wherever it needed to go.

She could. If she could make her hands obey her.

The captain's words hung in the back of her mind, accusing. Was it right to take lives to save other lives? She could tell herself until she was blue in the face that there was no chance of the _Sapphire Rose_ doing any real damage to the vastly more massive Orion ships, with their weapons and powerful shields, but that was sophistry. If she followed Hegev's plan, she had a chance of causing casualties-- of killing people.

Could she do that? Could she live with herself if she did?

Could she live with herself if she didn't?

On the viewscreen, Hegev's second tactic swung into play.

The thing people tended to forget about transporters was that they recorded _everything_ about their target, but they only recreated some of the data upon rematerialization. This was necessary for trips of any notable length; otherwise the relative velocities of the target and the rematerialization platform would conflict, sending people and objects flying off on wild trajectories into the walls, the ceilings, or the floors. Transporters had extremely thorough failsafes to make sure all relative momentums matched.

A good engineer, of course, could break anything.

A swarm of rocks and ice popped into existence just outside the Orion ships' shields and disintegrated in brilliant bursts of electromagnetic chaos.

The ships rocked under the impact, but their shields held. Jayavanti held her breath as Hegev launched another swarm. This time the leftmost ship wobbled noticeably more than the others, slipping closer to the organized chaos of the planetary ring and taking a few hits from that direction as well.

Half of Hegev's next attack was aimed at that ship alone.

"Should we do anything?" Adam asked as rock after rock smashed into the vulnerable ship's shields, until they were visibly fading with each impact. "That's our target, right?"

"Yes," Jayavanti said. "But wait for Hegev's signal. Otherwise all this could be for nothing."

The Orions continued to tighten their net around the _Amber Lotus_. They had to have located the ship by now -- there was no way Hegev's power use could stay undetected, even allowing for the low-grade interference radiating upward from Simplicity's surface. Jayavanti wondered why the pirates didn't fire. What did they care if they hit a bunch of ice first, if they disrupted the entire ring, so long as they cleared a targeting path in the end?

The wounded ship's shields flickered lower with every continued impact. Now it was trying to withdraw, but either a strike had gotten through while Jayavanti was distracted, or the shields were stealing necessary power from the engines.

"Now?" Adam asked, hands fidgeting over the torpedo firing controls.

"No."

And please to all the gods, not ever. But Jayavanti knew that prayer would go unanswered.

Above and to starboard, one of the Orion ships pivoted sharply until its nose pointed straight down at the chaos of the planetary ring.

It fired.

The _Amber Lotus_ , as a Red Cross ship, had only the minimal shields a civilian transport needed to protect itself from ordinary space debris. They were already working overtime to keep the ship safe in its hideaway between a thousand thousand shards of ice and stone.

There was never any chance they could stand up to actual weapons for more than a single shot.

The com crackled to life. "Jaya, now!" Hegev shouted over static and the unnervingly close and intimate sound of explosions.

On the viewscreen, transported rocks continued to pound the vulnerable pirate ship -- pre-programmed, maybe. Or maybe Hegev was staying at her self-appointed station until the end. Either way, the shields flared, dimmer and dimmer with each impact.

As the pirate's shields faded to nothing, as a last barrage of rocks shot through the sudden lack of resistance and died violently against its skin, nudging the power-drained bulk into a sluggish spin, its sister ship fired again.

Explosions bloomed deep in the planetary ring: the _Amber Lotus_ serving as her own funeral pyre.

Hegev's, too.

Numbly, Jayavanti pressed the button to fire the _Sapphire Rose_ 's impulse engine into life. The shuttlecraft leapt out of the concealing ring on the far side of the drifting, wounded pirate ship, and Jayavanti narrowed her eyes as she did her best to sync the console readouts to the viewscreen.

The more momentum she could build, the more damage the collision would cause. But the more time she took, the more chances the pirates had to shoot her down and render the whole game moot.

"Should I fire the torpedoes?" Adam asked as one of the other four Orion ships turned and aligned its phasers.

Jayavanti barely dodged the shot. "No! And shut up, you're distracting me." Her fingers danced on the console, wringing every bit of maneuverability she could get from the blocky, defenseless shuttlecraft.

Think of it like a game. Just a game. She was good at games -- hadn't she beat her little brothers so often they quit playing against her, and even taken out actual Starfleet pilot-track cadets in some of the more interesting racing and wargame MMOs? This was just buttons on a tablet and images on a screen; nothing more, nothing less. She could do this. She could--

She stifled a yelp as a phaser blast came within meters of blowing the _Sapphire Rose_ to useless fragments.

Right. To hell with momentum.

Jayavanti aimed herself at the wounded ship's engines, and the close-set warp nacelles, and dumped full power into the shuttlecraft's impulse drive.

The _Sapphire Rose_ died in a soundless rush of flame and shrapnel. One warp nacelle snapped off and spun away, end over end, into the planetary ring. Jayavanti held her breath.

A line of fire bloomed up the side of the pirate ship, like a zipper peeling back the plates to let hard vacuum in. Another rush of chaos, impossible to separate into coherent images, and when she blinked the dazzle from her eyes, the whole back half of the ship was gone, vaporized into gas and dust.

Beside her, Adam swallowed, the sound very loud despite the thunder of Jayavanti's pulse in her ears. "Are they dead?" 

"I don't know. Maybe. Probably." Jayavanti clenched her hands around the edges of the lap console, useless now without anything to connect to. "Even if anyone survived the explosions, they won't last long unless the other ships can beam them away before life support fails."

" _Good_ ," Adam said.

Jayavanti didn't dare turn her head to see what expression might be carved into his face.

She should have targeted the bridge. That would be the more sensible tactical choice -- make sure she took out the captain and the bulk of the crew. But she couldn't quite bring herself to do that, to aim premeditatedly at people rather than at their ship.

It was a pointless, hair-splitting distinction. She knew that. Killing the engines to kill the ship was as good as killing the ship's crew. And obviously the engineering section would have been full of people trying desperately to kickstart the engines and pull power from somewhere to protect their wounded ship.

It still felt different. She'd probably never get a chance to sit down and work out why.

"We should move," Adam said. "They must be looking for us now."

Jayavanti shook her head. "Not yet. Remember, we're not trying to win. We're buying time. The Orions must have realized how smart Hegev is-- _was_." Her voice cracked, and she pushed onward -- if she didn't, if she stopped to breathe, everything would be real, and she couldn't afford to break down now. "They're probably wondering what other traps she might have planned. The safe thing, the smart thing, is to stay in orbit for a while, searching the ring to see what else she left. The longer we can draw that out, the better, so we don't move until they find us."

"And then we fight?"

"Yeah. And then we fight."

Jayavanti disconnected the laptop console and rose from her seat to stow it in one of the compartments near the rear of the _Shiva Dances_ 's tiny bridge. It took her three tries to refasten the compartment latch. Her hands were shaking.

She checked her skin, reflexively, but it didn't seem gray or clammy, and she didn't feel dizzy or nauseated. Her pulse was high, though, and she was definitely agitated... but under the circumstances, those struck her as less dangerous signs than their opposites would be.

So, not shock. But maybe getting close to its edges. Definitely something to keep an eye on.

She desperately wanted a cup of tea: jasmine, maybe, something light and floral and soothing, nothing like the black Assam blends she usually used to wake up at the start of her shifts, or the oolongs she drank as afternoons dragged on.

Hegev used to laugh at her drinking habits -- "Not ordinary enough for coffee, but not interested enough to bother getting anything higher quality than cheap processed scrap in bags," she'd said when she first saw Jayavanti's collection of tins and cardboard boxes. But she'd been willing to drink a cup or two when Jayavanti felt like being fancy, boiling a kettle, steeping loose leaf tea in a porcelain pot, and pouring tea like a delicate, fragrant waterfall down into two matching cups, instead of just nuking a mug and dropping in a bag on a string.

When Jayavanti had first boarded the _Amber Lotus_ , she'd been terrified of not fitting in. Hegev hadn't done much to reassure her, too blunt and abrasive to care about people who couldn't stand up to her. But then she'd stopped by Jayavanti's cabin one evening to commandeer Jayavanti's hands for a maintenance job, asked interested questions about the Daksinakali print she'd just fastened onto her wall, and invited Jayavanti to her own cabin to chat about Tellarite religious traditions the next time their off-shifts matched up. From there they'd moved on to their families, their favorite foods, their reasons for leaving home to see the stars... anything and everything, just to keep talking.

They'd never discussed the future, not beyond the end of their stint on the _Amber Lotus_ , but Jayavanti had started to expect their conversations would continue forever.

A month ago, Hegev had asked Jayavanti to help braid her hair and paint her nails, and painted Jayavanti's nails in return, and her hands had lingered just a bit longer with each touch than friendship alone could explain. And somehow, without her quite noticing, Jayavanti had started to think they might continue their contact in person instead of via console screens, across the unimaginably vast gaps between the stars.

She'd started to plan the rest of her life around Hegev.

She'd never have the chance to ask if Hegev thought the same. 

Jayavanti slumped back into the pilot seat and glanced up at the viewscreen. Then she frowned. Only two of the four remaining Orion ships was still visible. Even if they'd split up to investigate more areas of the planetary ring, they shouldn't have gone far enough to leave the _Shiva Dances_ 's sensor radius.

"Adam? Did you see where the other two ships went?" she asked.

Adam failed to answer. When Jayavanti looked over toward the weapons console, he was hunched over in his seat, head nearly between his knees with the heels of both hands pressed tight against his temples and his breath coming harsh and fast in pants.

Shit. She'd been close enough to shock that she'd forgotten to check _him_ for symptoms as well.

Jayavanti hurried over and set one hand on his left shoulder. "Adam. Adam, listen to me. You need to get out of the chair and lie down. Let me help you." He didn't respond, just curled his fingers into his uncombed hair. Jayavanti tried again: "Adam, you're in shock. You need to lie down."

Adam shook his head, indrawn breath hissing between his teeth. "Not shock," he said. "It's-- the alien-- Fra Baerdi? She's talking in my head. And it _hurts_."

What?

"That's--"

'Impossible,' Jayavanti wanted to say, but she clicked her teeth shut before the second word could escape. Elakwa had said Adam was unusually psychically receptive for a human, hadn't she? And without a safe way to use normal communication channels, telepathy with an unprepared, untrained mind might start to seem like a reasonable option.

"That's fascinating," she said instead. "Um. Can Elakwa hear your thoughts, or is the connection one way?"

"She can hear me," Adam said. "She wants me to stop shouting. I don't know how not to shout! I don't even know how she's doing this!"

Jayavanti ignored this. "Tell her the _Amber Lotus_ is gone. Hegev is-- Hegev went down with the ship. The _Sapphire Rose_ is gone too, but I-- we-- _I_ used it to blow up one of the Orion ships. There are only four left. We'll try to keep buying time."

Adam squeezed his eyes shut and moved his lips, repeating something over and over under his breath.

"Did she hear?" Jayavanti asked. "Is she-- has she told the captain?"

She needed to know Inez's reaction.

She didn't think she could bear to hear it.

But instead of answering, Adam raised his head, dread darkening his eyes and painted across his face, and said, "It's too late. One of the ships already landed in Providence."

Jayavanti stared blankly forward, his words echoing and reechoing in her ears. So it had all been for nothing. Hegev's death. Her-- whatever she'd done, twisting her ethics into knots. A ship full of sentient beings, injured and killed. For no purpose at all.

Adam winced and dug his fingers into his hairline, as if the pressure could relieve the pain of whatever Elakwa was doing to mindspeak him all the way from surface to orbit. "She says the pirates started rounding up everyone in the fields. Now they're at the hospital. Jaheim is going to try--"

The proximity siren blared. The little ship rocked with the dispersed force of a near-miss phaser shot, shedding energy as it passed and sent sprays of vaporized rock outward like a shockwave.

"Tell her they found us!" Jayavanti shouted, and hurled herself into the pilot's chair, hands fumbling over the console until she found the mute button for the alarm.

Then she gave herself over to flight.

She needed to stay in the planetary ring as long as she possibly could. The _Shiva Dances_ was just small enough to slip between the bigger chunks of ice and stone, but there was no way the Orion ships could follow her through the debris. They had to snipe from a distance, and beware the potential backwash of their own weapons knocking asteroids out of their normal orbits, spinning outward from Simplicity like randomized torpedoes.

Of course, the longer she stayed in the ring, the greater her own chances of collision with a disrupted chunk of matter. And sooner or later she would have to risk pulling into open space, if only to give Adam a clear shot at one of the pirates.

The _Enterprise_ was still four hours away, by Hegev's best estimate. Or maybe not. Maybe it was closer.

"What time is it!" she shouted.

"What?" Adam said.

"The chrono display! Tap the top left of your console and it should flash the time. What does it say!"

Adam read the numbers.

Right. Three and a half hours. There was no way they could buy that much time, and whatever Jaheim was trying down on the planet, there was no way it could work for very long.

But she couldn't give in.

Jayavanti rolled the _Shiva Dances_ between a phaser blast and an asteroid, then fired the engines in reverse to drop toward Simplicity and the inner edge of the ring. The shuttlecraft shook as it sped up, and she nearly bit her tongue in concentration as she tweaked the thrusters, skating around chunks of rock suddenly going only half her speed. In their greater orbits, the three Orion ships began to fall behind, their shots landing well astern of the shuttlecraft's new position.

The smallest ship rolled to port, past the northern edge of the ring, and began its own descent toward the planet, racing faster and faster (with no need to dodge asteroids) until it drew close once again, and began to fire through the thinner screen of debris.

Jayavanti kicked the _Shiva Dances_ back toward the outer rim of the ring -- only to find that the other Orion ships had also dropped and risen, to planetary north and south of the equator, and were now tracking ahead and behind her in a sort of pincer grip, one on either side of the all-too-narrow ring.

Space had three dimensions, after all.

Jayavanti juked and dodged as best she could, so drunk on adrenaline she felt like the ship was her own skin, like this was just another run-through of Neutral Zone Raiders or a fever dream, and she'd wake up any minute to laugh at the things imagination could create.

Even Adam's background litany of, "When do I fire? When do I fire?" couldn't break the sense of specimen glass between her hands and her brain.

"When I tell you!" she said, and then winced as a phaser blast nearly clipped their prow.

The ring wasn't worth it anymore. Time to get out and give the kid a shot.

She kicked upward again, and just as the Orion ship to the north caught on and started to match velocities, she turned hard to starboard and dove out of the ring in a corkscrew trajectory that sent her neatly behind the other Orion ship, toward its engines and away from the bulk of its weapons.

If the crew had fixed the shielding damage from Hegev's earlier attacks, this would likely do nothing. But it had a few visible impact marks, unlike the other two ships. And they had to try.

"Now, now, take the shot!"

Adam hit the controls.

A half dozen photon torpedoes launched in rapid succession: three bursts of two, as fast as the little ship could mechanically load and fire them.

The pirate ship's shields flickered, flickered... and dropped for a crucial instant.

The third round of torpedoes smashed into the engines and burst in brilliant, ephemeral gouts of flame and steel. The ship spun, ponderously, then faster and faster as it dropped sideways and down, toward Simplicity and the thickness of its ring.

Jayavanti didn't stick around to watch its fate. She turned the _Shiva Dances_ around its center axis until the prow pointed straight up and out from the planet, said goodbye to orbital games, and accelerated as fast as the refurbished engines and battered hull allowed.

Behind her, the two remaining Orion ships turned and gave chase, conserving fire for the moment.

If she was very lucky, she might reach the next planet in the system before the pirates caught her. It was an ice giant with a powerful magnetic field. A reckless pilot could play hide and seek for a long time in its outer atmosphere.

She probably wouldn't be lucky.

"We're going to die, aren't we?" Adam said in an oddly toneless voice.

"Probably," Jayavanti said. "But we bought some time. That's not nothing."

Without the immediate stress of dodging asteroids and phasers, she had space to notice how close to the edge she was getting. Her knees and elbows kept trying to shake, her hands were sweaty, and now she genuinely did feel nauseated and chilled. But she couldn't lie down and raise her feet, didn't have a blanket to wrap around her shoulders.

"If the Elders had been willing to listen, if our starship hadn't been destroyed, none of this needed to happen," Adam said, voice still dull and flat. He was probably skirting the edge of shock as well. Jayavanti couldn't treat him either.

"This is what my parents knew was coming," he continued. "I don't know if I want to die protecting the world that killed them. But I suppose there are worse ways to die than doing what they never got the chance to do."

"Yeah."

"Do you think they'd be proud of me?"

What was she supposed to say to that? She'd never known Adam's parents. She had no idea what they thought about the ethics of violence, or whether they'd be able to forgive their community for their son's ostracism.

She didn't even know if her parents would be proud of her.

"Yeah," she said. "I think they would."

Behind them, the pirates began to fire again.

Eventually Jayavanti missed a dodge. A phaser shot glanced off the _Shiva Dances_ 's rear starboard thruster, and before she could fight the little ship out of its spin, another struck the fore port thruster.

The shields flickered and died.

Jayavanti fired her remaining thrusters, frantically trying to evade the next round of fire. "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuckity fucking Kali on a mountain of motherfucking skulls I am not going to fucking die here, I swear I will go to Varanasi and purify myself in the river, I will go to Vimala, I will go to Tara Tarini, I will go--"

As the viewscreen lit with incoming phaser blasts, the world went sparkling and thin and a transporter beam swept her away to points unknown.

\---------------

**Now:**

"What in the fucking name of--" Jayavanti started to say as soon as she had lungs again.

"You're welcome," Hegev said from behind the controls of an unfamiliar cargo transporter. "I accept payment in the form of hugs, tea parties, and extravagant praise."

Jayavanti closed her eyes. When she opened them, Hegev was still there. Alive. Bruised and covered in tiny burns and cuts, as if she'd been caught in a shower of electrical sparks and red-hot shrapnel, but alive.

And so were she and Adam.

She lunged forward, wrapped her arms around Hegev, and buried her face in her shoulder. "You were dead," she said into the smoke-stained fabric of Hegev's coveralls. "You were _dead_ and I lost you and I-- and you were _dead_."

"I'm sorry, Jaya. I would have told you if I could, but then the Orions would have known," Hegev said, pressing one hand gently against the small of Jayavanti's back. "I figured it was more important to stay hidden and try to save you too."

"Thank you for saving us," Adam said from somewhere behind and to the side.

Jayavanti slowly raised her head and scrubbed angrily at her face with the back of her hand. "Sometimes I really hate you, Hegev. Don't die again. I need-- I want-- you're not allowed to die. Or else."

"Same to you," Hegev said.

If she followed her first reaction, Jayavanti was going to spend the next hundred years clinging to Hegev and crying. And if she did that, Hegev would probably die. Which couldn't happen.

She forced herself to let go, step back, and examine the space around them instead. A mostly empty cargo hold of some sort, the walls painted a light blue-gray and covered in years of uncleaned scrapes, stains, and dust. A series of bulkheads protruded into the space like ribs, arching upward in brutally efficient curves. One wall held a row of chains with what looked suspiciously like handcuffs at the ends, and a corresponding row of shackles at ankle level. The other wall held a pile of standard shipping containers stacked three high and two deep; no way to tell if they were full or empty. Overhead the lights were set to their lowest intensity, leaving the hold bathed in twilight and pitch-black shadows.

"We're on one of the Orion ships," she said. "Aren't we."

"Obviously," Hegev said. "I beamed over just before they blew up the _Amber Lotus_ \-- I wasn't sure it would work, but their shields wobbled just enough, and it's not like I'd left any failsafes on our ship to object to the attempt. Don't worry, though, I was more careful with you. But overriding their shields to grab you blew my cover, and we're going to have unhappy company in two minutes, tops. Here, grab a phaser and remember -- none of us are allowed to die."

She threw a phaser rifle toward Jayavanti, who caught it awkwardly by the barrel and lifted it to look askance at its various parts.

"What am I supposed to do with this?" Jayavanti asked. She'd never held a gun before, not really, not even for games. All she'd ever been interested in was flying or puzzles, and outside of that, fixing the problems guns left behind.

"You shoot people," Hegev said, in a tone that implied a very dim view of Jayavanti's basic intelligence. She threw a matching rifle to Adam, who caught it much more neatly and immediately began checking its sights.

"This is much lighter than a harpoon," he said.

Jayavanti ignored him. "I can't shoot people. I'm a nurse!"

"I hate to break it to you, but you already killed at least twenty people with the _Sapphire Rose_ , and you and the kid are jointly responsible for another twenty or thirty with the torpedoes," Hegev said. "Violence is violence. Dead is dead. And they're going to be shooting right back at us, if that makes you feel any better. You can tell yourself you're protecting me and the idiot."

"Hey!" Adam said.

"I know," Jayavanti said. "Believe me, I _know_. But it's still different, and I really don't think--"

A controlled explosion from outside the cargo bay set off sparks in the door controls before she could finish.

"Down!" Hegev shoved Jayavanti away from the transporter platform toward the first bulkhead behind the shipping containers. She dove in the opposite direction, behind the limited cover of the transporter console, and started firing her own phaser rifle toward the corridor as the pirate crew pried open the now disconnected doors and prepared to enter the room.

Behind the blur of sparks and smoke, somebody screamed and fell.

Jayavanti's hands were shaking again. She could see them tremble on the metal and plastic lines of the phaser. She couldn't bring herself to raise it, to find the trigger, to aim at a living person so close they were breathing the same air.

To her right, crouched behind the shipping containers, Adam made a noise of discovery, and a bolt of energy lanced out in the general direction of the door. It missed by several meters, and Jayavanti looked over to see the surprise on his face.

"No recoil," he said, mostly to himself. "This is very different from harpoons."

He took another shot. This time his aim was better.

But despite his and Hegev's best efforts, a handful of the pirates -- definitely Orions, Jayavanti thought absently as she noted the green and aqua tones of their faces and hands -- had slipped into the cargo hold and found their own cover behind some hastily moved containers. Now they were sliding the containers across the floor until they could create a crossfire to counter the one Hegev and Adam had accidentally set up.

Adam leaned forward, trying to aim around the blockage.

A blaster bolt flashed through the dimness and struck his right arm. He screamed and dropped his rifle.

Jayavanti threw her own rifle aside and dove around the bulkhead to kneel at his side. His sleeve was torn and partially charred, and a broad swath of damage cut across the outside of his arm like an anatomy diagram, layers of skin vaporized from his shoulder halfway down to his elbow, revealing reveal raw, bleeding meat. She set her hands in the tattered fabric and tore it wider to fully expose the wound.

"Jaya, no!" Hegev shouted, but Jayavanti wasn't listening.

Here, finally, was something she knew how to deal with, something she was trained for, something that _made sense_. Here was an injury, and she was a nurse. She was going to treat her patient.

"I don't need--" Adam tried to say, before trailing off into a moan. He clutched toward his injured arm with his left hand.

"Shhh. You'll be fine," Jayavanti said, and got to work.

She didn't have anything to clean the wound with, but first things first: pressure, bandage, elevate if possible, and then immobilize just in case.

"Press here," she said, moving Adam's left hand to the inside of his right arm, almost up in his armpit. "As hard as you can." With a bit of luck that would compress the brachial artery, and make him feel less helpless in the bargain. As Adam gulped, and tried his best to obey, Jayavanti shrugged out of her vest and started tearing it into ragged strips.

One unarmed woman treating a wound wasn't an immediate threat compared to another woman actively shooting a phaser rifle. The pirates duly ignored Jayavanti in favor of Hegev for the next minute and a half; all she had to do was duck an occasional ricochet. When the last of the shots stopped, when someone came over to haul her roughly to her feet, she was still unharmed.

"I wasn't done with the sling!" she protested.

One of the pirates -- a woman, black hair shaved on the sides of her head and the rest pulled into a topknot, some kind of rank insignia on her chest, a blaster cradled easily in her right hand -- spat an angry burst of words in Orion. A moment later Hegev's translator, still clipped to her belt, crackled and repeated, "I don't care. He shot at us, he can live with the consequences," in Federation Standard.

The pirate pointed at the translator and nodded, emphatically. Then she coughed and pressed her free hand against her side, as if trying to ease the pressure on cracked or broken ribs.

Jayavanti took a half-step forward, hands rising involuntarily. "I'm a nurse. Do you want help with--"

The pirate backhanded her across the mouth. "Shut up. No more of your lies. You're all coming to the bridge for the captain and the matriarch to pass sentence, and so we can broadcast your execution to everyone who needs to watch."

She flexed her fingers, absently, then raked her crew with an assessing gaze. "I'm embarrassed for all of you, taking this long to pin down three civilians. I foresee a lot of refresher scrubbing in your future. But for now, tie them up and let's move."

"Yes, Lt. Sheselai," said the pirate currently holding Jayavanti's wrists behind her back in a vise-tight grip. One hand vanished for a moment -- in her peripheral vision, Jayavanti saw Hegev struggling against her own captor -- and then the bite of polymer shrink-cuffs replaced the warmth of living skin.

The pirates cuffed even Adam's hands behind his body rather than in front, with no concession to his mangled arm and half-finished sling. Then all three were shoved out of the cargo hold at blaster point.

"You should have fired," Hegev muttered under her breath as the Orions marched them in a stumbling line, through the corridors and lifts of the dingy, industrial-looking ship.

"We'd still have lost," Jayavanti whispered back. "And the more of them you and Adam hurt, the angrier they'd be. At least for now we're all alive."

"That's no blessing," Adam said from behind her. "What the aliens-- what the pirates did to their captives-- some of the adults would still tell stories when I was younger. They'd give you nightmares."

"Shut up back there!" Lt. Sheselai shouted over her shoulder, and waved her hand over the sensor controls of one final door.

They shuffled through onto the bridge.

The room was roughly twice the size of the _Amber Lotus_ 's bridge, but the sheer jumble of people and obviously jerry-rigged machinery almost made the space feel smaller. Nobody wore uniforms, though there was some effort at a common aesthetic via badges on the upper right chest and colored armbands around upper sleeves. One console to the left of the main viewscreen was sparking and useless; a woman lay on the floor plates, upper body tucked underneath the damaged panels and toolbelt unfolded by her side, cursing unintelligibly as she tried to perform repairs. Scorch marks on the walls showed that this kind of malfunction was far from unknown. Muted orange-red lights flashed around the edges of the ceiling, though no alarm was audible, and a half-dozen crewmembers turned with weapons already drawn when the door slid open.

The captain, a middle-aged Orion man with blueish-green skin, a shaved head, and gold beads threaded into the long strands of his beard, was conferring with a woman standing at his shoulder and holding a padd. She looked roughly his same age, with deep green skin and red-black hair pulled back in a ruthlessly tight braid. Unlike the rest of the crew, she wore no sidearm. Somehow Jayavanti failed to find that reassuring.

"Captain Vihaijo! Matriarch Nelaud!" Lt. Sheselai said, swinging her blaster up to rest on her right shoulder. "We found them."

The captain turned in his chair with a snarl. "Only three?"

"Yes, sir," Lt. Sheselai said. "And they fought like _narthuapit_ in a trap -- or at least two of them did. Moli is dead and I sent Igaurat and Pilila to medical for treatment. Igaurat should be fine with a bandage, but Pilila's down for at least a day."

"Two-faced Federation," Captain Vihaijo said, and spat onto the soot-stained floor. "Peace and harmony, they say, and then their gods-be-eaten _civilians_ take out two of our ships and start firefights in our own cargo bays. No wonder nobody trusts them."

"Trusts them!" Adam shouted. "You're the ones invading my planet! You're the ones who want to kill--"

Jayavanti kicked his ankle and he broke off with a yelp.

" _You_ are the ones who settled a world within Congeries territory and never thought to ask permission. You are the ones who destroyed two ships of our sister house a generation ago," the woman standing beside the captain -- presumably Matriarch Nelaud -- said coldly. "If vermin invade your storehouse, do you negotiate with them or do you clear the infestation?"

"Infes--"

Jayavanti kicked Adam's ankle again.

As he turned to her in indignation, a man at a console across the bridge leaned back in his seat, blaster knocking awkwardly against the edge of his chair, and said, "Captain! We're receiving a signal from a Federation ship. They say they're--"

He broke off, an incredulous expression blooming across his face.

"Did we buy you into this net for incompetence, Obla? Finish your twelve shitting gods sentence," Captain Vihaijo snapped.

"They say they're the USS _Enterprise_ ," the communications officer said.

A sudden tension crackled across the bridge. Lt. Sheselai sucked in a startled breath, and Jayavanti wanted to knock the heel of her hand against her ear to make sure she hadn't developed aural hallucinations.

"I thought the _Enterprise_ was still three hours away, even assuming they got your emergency beacon," she hissed into Hegev's ear.

Hegev looked equally surprised. "They were. They should have been. I don't know what's going on."

"Quiet," Lt. Sheselai said, and punctuated the order by thumping the butt end of her blaster into the small of Jayavanti's back.

In the center of the bridge, the captain finished a fierce exchange of whispers with the matriarch and straightened in his seat as he faced the main viewscreen. "Answer them," he said.

Static flickered briefly across the screen, warping and twisting the image of Simplicity hanging blue and green in the blackness of space. Then a new image snapped to life: the shining white bridge of a Constellation-class Federation starship.

A ruddy human man with blond hair sat in the captain's chair, with a pale, black-haired Vulcan standing at his shoulder. Captain Kirk, Jayavanti realized, and his first officer, Commander Spock. She'd seen holos, of course -- and this wasn't any more in-person than those, still an image transmitted across who knew how many thousands of kilometers of space -- but somehow it felt different. This was here and now. This was real.

"This is Captain James. T. Kirk of the USS _Enterprise_ ," Kirk said, his face serious and his tone carefully neutral. "We are on a medical intervention mission to the colony planet of Simplicity. Identify yourselves and your purpose in this system."

Captain Vihaijo leaned forward in his chair, projecting irritation. "I am Captain Vihaijo of the _Amet-bak-Ultalit_. Beside me is Matriarch Nelaud of House Ir-Chedelit. Our sister ships are the _Sheersha_ and the _Hiroka-dan-Vair_. You are in Orion Congeries territory. Leave or prepare to be destroyed."

"Can they do that?" Jayavanti hissed to Hegev while Kirk and Vihaijo continued the falsely polite dance of intimidation. "Destroy the _Enterprise_ , I mean? It's two ships against one, even if the _Enterprise_ is bigger."

"Probably not," Hegev murmured, "but they can sure destroy us, plus they still have a ship down on the surface so who knows how many of the idiot colonists they might have hostage by now."

"Don't call them--" Adam started to say, before Lt. Sheselai thumped him with her blaster.

"Move!" she said, and her squad shoved the three of them forward into the viewing field.

Vihaijo gestured casually toward them. "If your values really are what you claim them to be, Kirk, you will reconsider firing on either of our ships. We do, after all, have hostages."

Lt. Sheselai raised her blaster and set it against the side of Jayavanti's skull.

Kirk's face tightened briefly, but all he said was, "I see. That's your final negotiating position?"

"There are also the illegal settlers on the planetary surface to consider, particularly the ones our cousins on the _Sheersha_ have apprehended," Matriarch Nelaud added in a considering tone. "By Congeries tradition, their lives are forfeit. However, we might see our way to granting mercy, in return for equivalent concessions on your part."

Kirk was silent for a long moment. Then a dark woman with elegant hair approached from offscreen. "Captain," she said crisply, and handed him a padd. Kirk glanced down at the screen. Then he smiled and met Vihaijo's gaze again, across the steadily decreasing distance between their ships.

"I regret to inform you that the _Sheersha_ and her crew have been incapacitated by the colonists. Would you like to reconsider your position?"

Vihaijo and Nelaud exchanged a tight look. Lt. Sheselai's blaster pressed harder into Jayavanti's skin. Jayavanti tried not to breathe.

"Further escalation of hostilities only exposes your moral pretensions for the self-serving lies they are," Captain Vihaijo said. "You will release our people or--"

Commander Spock looked up from the padd in his hands. "Captain, we are locked and ready."

Kirk looked directly at the hostages for the first time -- his eyes were very blue, Jayavanti noticed, somewhat inanely -- and said, "I'm sorry. Initiate on my mark," he added, turning sideways to face someone offscreen.

Captain Vihaijo whirled in his seat. "Prepare evasive maneuvers! Fire at will! Obla, get Firtaub on the line and tell her--"

As he continued snapping orders, Lt. Sheselai lowered her blaster and smiled. "Any last words before you die knowing your life is so worthless even your Federation's greatest hero, the one who saves everyone, won't stoop to save _you?_ "

"Mark," Kirk said, his voice cutting effortlessly through the chaos of the Orions' bridge.

As Jayavanti flinched in reflexive terror of the impending attack and Lt. Sheselai's smile twisted into a snarl, the world dissolved once more in a sparkling whirl.

Jayavanti fell to her knees on an individual transporter pad in a white, well-lit room. To her left, Adam panted in pain and adrenaline drop. To her right, Hegev wobbled on her feet, cursing at increasing volume.

"What--" Jayavanti tried to say, before the words shattered into a cough.

A pale, gangly human man, slightly balding, rushed out from behind the transporter console and knelt to help Jayavanti back onto her feet. "Sorry it took us so long to sneak through those bastards' shields and get a lock on you three. You're safe now, lassie. Dinnae worry if the ship rocks a bit, I promise there's no way they can do more than put a scuff or two on her skin. Oh, I should introduce myself, shouldn't I? Lt. Commander Montgomery Scott of the USS _Enterprise_. Welcome aboard. We'll have those cuffs off in a jiffy and Dr. McCoy will be here in half a tick to look you over."

Jayavanti's head spun under the rapid flow of words.

"I-- thank you?" she managed. "I can stand on my own. You should be looking after Adam. He's hurt."

Lt. Commander Scott looked across the transporter platform, made a face at the sight of Adam's arm in its makeshift bandage and sling, and hurried over to stop Adam from trying to get up.

As Jayavanti swayed upright, Hegev shoved her own shoulder under Jayavanti's bound arms to lend her some support. "We won, Jaya," she said, eyes shining with triumph above her upturned snout and bared teeth. "We get to live, and we _won_."

\---------------

**One Day After:**

Twenty-four hours later, Jayavanti sat cross-legged on the edge of the glassy area once again serving as the _Jade Lily_ 's landing site, just far enough onto the sand and away from the grass and bushes that lurking ankle-biters, with their freight of mutated lung dragons, would be disinclined to venture from their vegetative shelters in search of food. A light breeze swept from the land out over the water, and the distant, not-quite-rhythmic hiss of waves made a soothing background to the organized chaos emanating from the _Jade Lily_ and two of the _Enterprise_ 's own smaller, blockier shuttlecraft.

Hegev sat beside her, fiddling with the guts of a tricorder she was attempting to reconfigure to work around the chameleonite's interference.

"I don't need more time to rest," Jayavanti said to the chunk of driftwood she was turning around and around in her hands. "Sixteen hours was more than enough. This is just ridiculous. Captain Castaño didn't make Jaheim sit out this long, and he got just as roughed up as we did. I should be out treating patients."

The wood looked a bit like a starship, from one angle. From another, if she squinted and got the shadows to fall just right, it looked like a skull.

"Jaheim stood in the hospital door and stonewalled the _Sheersha_ 's crew long enough for some of the less willfully stupid colonists to bang them over the head," Hegev said. "That's a little different from blowing up two starships. Much less moral stress, even if the physical injuries are similar."

Jayavanti scooped up a fistful of sand and hurled it toward the water. "Don't talk to me about moral stress."

"Then pick a different topic," Hegev said, words slightly muddled by the tiny screwdriver clenched between her teeth.

Jayavanti threw another handful of sand. Then she braced her elbows on her knees, let her chin sink into her interlaced hands, and sighed. "I quit the Red Cross. Did I tell you that? I think I forgot, in the middle of everything. But I quit. I told Inez so over the radio just before the pirates got here."

"Mmm. Neutrality, right?"

"Yeah." Jayavanti pressed her fingertips against her eyebrows, then pulled them down to rub at her cheekbones and all around her eye sockets. A yawn was building up somewhere in her chest, but she pressed her lips together and fought it back to a long, slow inhale through her nose. She needed some tea.

"I don't know what else I could have done, though. Jaheim saved people without doing anything worse than knocking one pirate over the head with her own blaster, but he didn't have to make that choice. The Cordites did that themselves. Even if he had shot someone, it's, I don't know, different somehow to step in when somebody's going to shoot a patient right in front of you than to shoot them yourself, preemptively, when they're not anywhere near the patients."

"Mmm," Hegev said again. She closed one of the tricorder panels, tapped a series of buttons, and frowned at the readout.

Jayavanti watched a green-and-yellow lizard-bird thing swoop down over the waves and rise, screeching triumphantly, with some kind of wriggling creature in its talons.

"You're being awfully mild," she said. "I know you don't agree, so why aren't you arguing?"

"There are times and places for arguments, and when your partner is soul-sick isn't one of them," Hegev said as she opened the tricorder back up. "Once you're stabilized, I'll push until you figure out where you stand and start pushing back. But until then, I'll save my efforts for the parts of your brain that want to rip the other parts to shreds. I want you whole, not bleeding out by inches."

Jayavanti let herself slump sideways until her head rested on Hegev's shoulder. "Thanks."

"Anytime," Hegev said. Then she coughed and changed the subject. "So! You're out of a job. I probably am too -- obviously it's less serious for me since I'm not a medical professional, but I violated Red Cross principles just as much as you did. And while you were still sleeping this morning, I had a very interesting conversation with some of the _Enterprise_ command crew."

Jayavanti blinked as something recurred to her. "Oh, I should talk to them about Adam. I told him, a few days ago, that I'd ask if they would take him off Simplicity and help him apply for internal refugee status or something."

"Good. I don't think he'd be safe if he stayed here," Hegev said. "But leaving that particular idiot aside, what would you say to enlisting in Starfleet? Because like I said, I had a very interesting conversation, one part of which was a job offer if you and I take a refresher course at Starfleet Academy -- not the full cadet route, since obviously we both know how to handle ourselves in space, but organizational history, ethics, and things like that. They'd even arrange full scholarships. What do you say, Jaya?"

Her first instinct was to refuse -- she'd spent what felt like half her life explaining to well-meaning relatives and teachers that space, a sense of social responsibility, and Starfleet weren't mandatory synonyms, and it was the outside of unfair for Hegev of all people to raise that old specter again -- but Jayavanti forced herself to slow down and think. Hegev had also gone to space on her own terms. She wasn't asking thoughtlessly. She deserved a real, considered answer.

On the one hand, Starfleet Medical _was_ a dream job for doctors and nurses who didn't want to be stuck their whole lives on a single planet -- who wanted to travel to new places and face new challenges.

On the other hand, no matter how hard Starfleet tried to ring-fence the medical division, it was still part of the same organization. And in addition to its missions of exploration and aid, Starfleet was and always would be the Federation's military arm.

"I killed people yesterday," Jayavanti said slowly.

Hegev nodded. "I know. So did I."

"I never want to do that again. Ever. And if we joined Starfleet, I don't think they could promise that I'd never wind up in a situation like this again."

Hegev set down the tricorder and tucked her tools into the chest pocket of her coveralls. "I don't think anyone can promise that. Life isn't safe or predictable. But yeah, even the hospital and research ships have guns, and we might end up having to shoot them in a crisis."

"The thing is, I could shoot them. Probably. So long as I didn't have to look the people I was shooting in the face," Jayavanti said. "But I don't want to be that person. I want to be like Captain Castaño, or Jaheim, and do good without compromising my principles. And I don't think I could do that in Starfleet."

"Mmm," Hegev said.

"You should sign up, though. You'd be amazing."

"Obviously!" Hegev said. "But you wouldn't be there."

"Oh."

Hegev reached sideways to wrap her thick fingers around Jayavanti's wrist. "So, listen, forget Starfleet. Do you remember my cousin Vregar? The one with the dilithium mine she's always trying to hire me for? They can always use on-site medics, and we don't have to stay there forever -- just long enough to get our feet back under us, maybe save up some credits, while you figure out what you _do_ want instead of just what you don't."

"And that's-- and you'd be okay with that?"

Hegev shrugged. "Probably not forever -- I'd miss space -- but for a while? Sure. Mines are full of interesting engineering problems."

Jayavanti twisted her wrist out of Hegev's grip and resettled their hands so she could lace her own fingers between Hegev's. She took a deep breath and hoped her voice came out steady. "And we'd be there together."

Hegev looked down at their clasped hands. "Yeah."

"Let's do that, then."

The sun was warm on her head and shoulders, Hegev's hand was warm against hers, and Jayavanti swallowed hard against the flood of emotions trying to crowd their way up her throat and out through her eyes.

"I should probably get up and see if Dr. McCoy has any work for me," she said instead of the thousand things she had no words for. "Maybe I'm not part of Inez's crew anymore, but a nurse is still a nurse and Simplicity won't be out of the woods for a while yet. I want to help."

Hegev squeezed her hand. Then she unfolded her legs and stood, tugging Jayavanti up with her. "Go be a nurse. And when we leave this rustbucket planet, we'll figure out who our best selves are, together."


End file.
